Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 59

TIMES SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1998 7E Trees fromIE Slim sales foir. really Mg shoes The NBA labor dispute has left an Atlanta shoe store with big shoes to fill NBA center Oliver Miller once paid $5,500 for several pairs of size 16V2 shoes at Friedman's. fix i Wall Straat Journal about 11,000 tree's. This year Dollar hopes to do even better. He has snagged high-traffic locations, bought billboards declaring a "Blizzard is coming," and hired dozens of Ashe County locals to run his lots.

Which is how Michael Sean Francis and Michael Holman, both 22, came to be sitting under a tent at the corner of U.S. 19 and Sunset Point Road on a recent weekday afternoon, waiting for customers to pull in. From just before Thanksgiving to just before Christmas, the young men will sell trees from 7 a.m. until the last customer leaves. Then they'll crash in the tattered-looking mobile home on the lot From their vantage point behind a gas station, in front of a strip center and across the street from McDonald's, the young men from North Carolina's woods find little to love about Florida.

"I'm a guide in Wyoming during the summers, so I'm used to open spaces and this is taking some getting used to," said Holman, shouting over a droning TV and constant traffic. "We're just here to get rid of as many trees as we can, then get back home." have nearly identical approaches advertising Wisconsin trees that mostly aren't and rounding out their inventory with cider, wreaths and tree equipment another Wisconsinite keeps it simple. At Steigerwaldt's, on U.S. 19 in Palm Harbor and Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa, all trees really are from Wisconsin and 90 percent of them are from Steigerwaldt's farm in Tomahawk, just north of Stephens Point. The Steigerwaldt brothers, Ed and Bill, have been hauling trees to the Tampa Bay area for 20 years and they've got it down to an art The brothers take turns, blowing into town for a week each to tend the lots and stay in a rented condo in East Lake Woodlands.

Hired hands from up north do the setup and breakdown, tossing trees if they have to in order to make it home by Christmas. The biggest transient tree operation in the bay area is run by Danny Dollar, owner of Snowflake Farm in Ashe County, N.C. This year Dollar has 11 lots strung out from New Port Richey to Brandon. He has been hauling trees from his farm to the Tampa Bay area for about 20 years, last year selling Though Salzman says he is not trying to compete with mass marketers like Home Depot, he is super-sensitive to other out-of-towncrs on his turf. Asked about other Northerners peddling trees in the area, he mentions some guy way up on U.S.

19. He neglects to mention his uncle, who has two locations just a few miles away. "I split off from them nine years ago," Jim Salzman, owner of Jim's Wisconsin Trees, says of the rift between relatives. "But I was the one who suggested to my older brother and nephew that we get involved in this business, back in 1980." This is the first year Jim's Wisconsin Trees has tried two sites one off Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard and Old Coachman, the other on McMullen-Booth Road. And Jim Salzman, 48, is beat.

"This is very physical work, going from 6 a.m. to sometimes midnight, seven days a week," said Salzman, who grows flowers and organic produce outside Madison the rest of the year. "There are some nights when my face literally falls in my dinner plate." While Jim's and Northstar $25 for a table-top tree to several hundred dollars for a giant fir over 15 feet Though it might seem like these salesmen would be sick of trees after their monthlong marathon, they often pick a favorite from the Clearwater lot and toss it in the pickup to be hauled back to Wisconsin when their work is done. Some even lug it into a motel room at night for safekeeping. For Salzman and his partners, who run a greenhouse and produce farming operations in Wisconsin, selling Christmas trees in Florida can be a profitable venture in an otherwise slow season.

"If we have a good year selling trees, it's just the icing on the cake," said Salzman, whose partner started selling trees in the Clearwater area 19 years ago. "But it costs us $12 to $15 per tree just for our expenses down here and that doesn't include the cost of the tree and freight. There have been years when we've gotten bad trees and you wonder why you did all that work. It's not a guaranteed business." Don't feel too sorry for Nike Inc. chairman Phil Knight Bruce Teilhaber is the shoe salesman suffering most from the National Basketball Association lockout Teilhaber owns Friedman's Shoes in Atlanta, the unofficial supplier of designer footwear for the very big, very wealthy and currently very unemployed men of the NBA.

With games wiped out at least through year-end because of a labor dispute, the oversize athletes who have made Friedman's an NBA institution aren't passing through town this fall, leaving Teilhaber stuck with a locker room's worth of size 17 Davazanti loafers ($850) and size 19 ostrich-skin lace-ups "I never believed it would go this long," he said. "This hurts. We bought all the shoes six months in advance." The 60-year-old Teilhaber and his brother, Murray, began stocking extra-large footwear more than 20 years ago. Since then, they have achieved celebrity status within the NBA for their Jordanlike salesmanship and exotic selection. The brothers dispatch vans to hotels to shuttle visiting players to the store (which also carries size XXXXXL warm-up suits and 54-inch belts) and open at odd hours to accommodate team travel schedules.

Their efforts don't go unappreciated. "Usually when I'm with people, each guy gets about 10 pairs," said Oliver Miller, a 6-foot-9 center who played last season for the Toronto Raptors and once dropped $5,500 on several pairs of size Wk shoes. But without their hefty paychecks, players aren't splurging. While superstars continue to buy Shaquille O'Neal recently ordered several pairs of custom-made Italian loafers (retail: $650 each) the league's bourgeoisie is cutting back. "You're not going to the grocery store and coming out with 10 bags," Miller said from his cellular phone.

"You've got to be real conservative." Talk like that worries Teilhaber, who counts on Imelda Marcos-like sprees to turn a profit (The record: a 110-pair, $65,000 binge by boxing promoter Don King.) To cope with the NBA shutdown, Teilhaber recently sent mail-order catalogs to his hoops customers, slashed prices at the store and held a tent sale. Teilhaber says he does have sympathy for the players' plight but he also wants them to get back to work and to his store. They're my friends. I love the guys," he said. "But I bought all these big shoes." JUA Zelda fromIE fromIE One week, 36,000 job cuts planned market of young boys.

The Interactive Digital Software Association, a trade group in Washington, reports that 56 percent of all video-game players are over age 18, while Sony says 25 percent of its users are female. As a result, Gerard Klauer Mattison estimates the industry's U.S. retail sales will soar 47 percent to a record this year from in 1997. Already, Zelda has broken records, pre-selling an estimated 500,000 copies to customers who plunked down deposits. That is triple the industry's previous pre-release record.

Nintendo originally anticipated shipping 1-million units before New Year's but now says it expects that number to hit 3-million. By Friday evening, a Target store in Clearwater was down to its last six copies of Zelda. The store was nearly wiped out of the popular video game after the long Thanksgiving weekend. "We went through 10 cases," for a total of 60 copies, said Susan Jaeger, the store's assistant manager. "With new releases where there's so much excitement built in by the media you get high demand." Nintendo backed the Zelda launch with a $10-mil-lion marketing blitz, which began Nov.

1, with game-footage previews in more than 11,000 movie theaters. The game has also won critical acclaim for its 3-D graphics and depth of content. Some reviewers have likened playing Zelda to reading a novel, given the game's characters and complex plot line. And the Zelda world is filled with landscape scenes so realistic that reviewers say players can wander into a meadow, for instance, and hear crickets chirping. "It's the most impressive video game I've ever played," said Peer Schneider, editor of the online gamemagazineIGN64.com.

Sony, meanwhile, is pulling out the stops with a $40-million national campaign to promote Tomb Raider and other titles. The marketing blitz includes 60-foot Lara Croft murals on buildings. To promote the PlayStation name itself, Sony is running billboard and bus ads with taglines such as: "If you're going to lay on the couch, at least keep score." The early results are promising. Konami Konami of America Inc. unit says it sold 350,000 units of its Metal Gear Solid action game for PlayStation during the first weekend it shipped in October.

Sony's Sony Computer Entertainment unit says sales of its PlayStations have jumped 50 percent from the same time last year every week since the price was dropped Aug. 30 to $129 from $150. That performance widened PlayStation's sales lead over Nintendo 64 which sells for the same price to a 2-to-l ratio during September, according to NPD Group, a market-research firm in Port Washington, N.Y. Time staff writer Eve Tahmincioglu contributed to this report. trying to find this game for two weeks now, and my children are starting to drive me crazy," said the 35-year-old music producer, who wants the game for his sons, ages 12 and 13.

"They don't want to hear no or anything else. Now I'm feeling a little bit like a loser." Another customer, software engineer Ned Jordan of Los Angeles, has had no better luck finding one of the games for himself. A game enthusiast Jordan, 32, says he is especially frustrated because of all the publicity Nintendo has generated for Zelda. "I'm a little angry at being on the short end of the stick," he said. On Monday, the company's Nintendo of America Inc.

unit based in Redmond, said that within a week it will ship "hundreds of thousands of additional copies" of the game. Two years ago Nintendo faced a similar shortfall when it launched its advanced Nintendo 64 game player and severely underestimated demand. Some consumers have wondered whether Nintendo has intentionally created a shortage of the Zelda game to try to generate a selling frenzy. Nintendo denies that "You just never can anticipate something like this," said Perrin Kaplan, a Nintendo of America spokeswoman. Kaplan says Nintendo was unsure how well the game would do, given that the last Zelda title was shipped in 1992.

"We thought there would be a core group of Zelda players who would want this, but the video-game-playing audience has grown dramatically' Kaplan said. The current game, whose full title is Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, features a quest by a warrior named Link to rescue the kidnapped princess Zelda. It is the first Zelda title designed for the 64-bit Nintendo player with its capacity for sophisticated graphics. Nintendo's Christmas arsenal also includes a new color version of its black-and-white Game Boy, a hand-held player that continues to sell in the millions after 10 years on the market And Nintendo's major rival, Sony has a lineup of much-anticipated games designed for its PlayStation machines. Stores report strong sales of PlayStation's Tomb Raider III: The Adventures of Lara Croft, an adventure game about a long-legged archaeologist that hit stores last week.

Analysts expect that the U.S. video-game industry will shortly close out its second consecutive boom year. Prices of the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 machines are dropping steadily, and games are more powerful and realistic than ever, appealing to a more mature audience that goes beyond the traditional So far this year, more than a half-million U.S. workers have been laid off or told they'll lose their jobs. Aoclatd Praaa owners" after a major storm.

The reversal of fortunes for the JUA and windstorm pool is one the insurance industry never would have predicted a few years ago. The windstorm pool (technically the Florida Windstorm Underwriting Association) for years was a small entity that basically covered the Florida Keys. It has mushroomed in recent years as commercial insurers increasingly refused to underwrite wind coverage. The fast-growing windstorm pool spent $155-million alone this fall on wind damage claims from Hurricane Georges. In addition to approving a $100-million special assessment, it plans to sell in bonds to shore up its resources for next year.

The JUA was set up to provide basic homeowners coverage to hundreds of thousands of policyholders deemed "uninsurable" by commercial insurers in Florida after Hurricane Andrew In 1992. At one point, the JUA threatened, to surpass State Farm as the biggest homeowner insurer in the state with about 1-million policies. But the state has aggressively pared it down, successfully enticing insurance companies with a $100-per-policy incentive to "take out policies from the JUA. At the end of October, there were 267,520 policies in the JUA, primarily in storm-susceptible Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties in South Florida. Its total exposure was With $250-million in its pocket, the association is only $25-million shy of an important threshold that could spare homeowners a special assessment.

Under state law, the JUA has to fund the first $275-million in claims from a major disaster, assessing homeowners if it falls short. The next in claims are paid out of the state's catastrophe fund. The JUA's size, and the associated risk, continue to shrink. On Monday, its board is expected to approve proposals by five insurers to take an additional 68,800 policies off the JUA's hands. Because many of the.

policies are in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, the pot has been sweetened. The insurers are receiving a bonus of up to $200 a policy for taking policies out of the riskiest regions. The windstorm pool would love to use the same tactic to shrink its size and exposure. But it won't happen any time soon. Board members of the wind pool are wrangling with the state Department of Insurance over guidelines for private insurers that want to take over the policies.

Dan McLaughlin, spokesman for Insurance Commissioner Bill Nelson, said his boss wants the Legislature to deal with the issue. Nelson is drafting legislation that he hopes to have introduced in the spring. U.S. workers grew at a healthy 3 percent annual rate over the summer even as manufacturers struggled with sales lost to the Asian economic slump. More than a half-million American workers have been laid off or told they'll lose their jobs this year, according to data compiled by the Chicago employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray Christmas.

Johnson Johnson, which manufactures health care prod-; ucts such as Tylenol and-Band-Aid, said it planned to close 36 manufacturing facilities. The company said it would take an-after-tax charge of $800-million in the fourth-quarter. Deerfield, Alliant Foodservice said it plans to restructure its food distribution operations, a move that will include the elimination of up to 1,200 jobs. Weirton Steel said it will lay off 415 employees two weeks before Christmas, blaming underpriced, imported steel. Last month the Weirton, W.Va., steelmaker laid off 342 workers.

On Wednesday, cerealmaker Kellogg of Battle Creek, said it planned to cut 525 salaried positions and 240 contract workers, while White Plains, N.Y., manufacturer nT Industries Inc. said it planned a restructuring that could lead to the elimination of up to 1,200 jobs. Also Wednesday, New York securities firm D.E. Shaw Co. said it was eliminating 264 jobs, or nearly 25 percent of its work force, in a restructuring related to Bank-America $43-billion merger with NationsBank Corp.

NEW YORK U.S. companies are playing the role of the Grinch this holiday season, announcing job cuts of 36,000 workers this week alone. Health care giant Johnson Johnson, Alliant Foodservice Inc. and Weirton Steel Corp. all announced labor cuts Thursday.

Johnson Johnson's was the largest: The New Brunswick, company said it plans to eliminate 4,100 positions including 2,600 in the United States over the next 19 months. Its announcement pales with that of Boeing Co. The aerospace giant said Tuesday it will cut 20,000 jobs on top of cuts previously announced. By the end of 2000, Seattle-based Boeing plans to eliminate 48,000 jobs. The combination of oil giants Exxon Corp.

and Mobil announced this week, will lead to the elimination of another 9,000 jobs worldwide. It's not unusual for a flood of corporate pink slips to appear in the weeks before Christmas as companies finish their plans for the new year and approve budgets. Many companies are trying to stay lean and efficient through layoffs. A Labor Department productivity report released Thursday showed that the productivity of Bank fromIE scrutiny from state officials. Two Democratic members of the California Assembly Banking Committee, Louis Papan, the chairman, and Kerry Mazzoni, said Thursday that if the new bank did not demonstrate a commitment to California, they might argue for moving state banking business, worth billions of dollars, away from BankAmerica.

"It's a last resort" Papan said, "but it's up to them to have us understand the direction this bank is going. "I'm very concerned about women executives leaving the bank. I don't know how they do things in North Carolina, but we have made tremendous strides in reducing the gender gap here." Six top women executives at BankAmerica resigned recently after their jobs were given to male NationsBank executives. Magnani said most of those women were offered "very important positions in the new company and they made decisions to leave for personal reasons." ca that we want to be a partner and not reflective of the diversity and spirit of San Francisco or California, why would we want to do business with that bank?" A veteran spokesman for the bank in San Francisco, Peter Magnani, said the concern stemmed from nervousness about change and "fearing the worst" "We are up against perceptions. We are doing what we can to allay fears and convince people we are going to do the right thing," Magnani said.

Municipal ordinances hold that only the city's two major full-service banks, BankAmerica and Wells Fargo, can be its banker, said treasurer Susan Leal. Bank-America has handled almost all the city's business for 80 years. "We have a relationship that is almost like Siamese twins, over 80 years," Leal said. "But I have some concerns about having such a close relationship with a bank that is no longer headquartered in San Francisco." BankAmerica Is also facing Francisco," Renne said of the bank's leaders. "They certainly do not care a whit about the women executives who work for the bank, and I don't think they care a whit about anything other than lining their own pockets." Recent developments, including the departure of San Francisco-based executives, especially, women, and concerns about future community lending practices, have roiled city officials.

The bank merger took effect in September. The notion of possibly cutting ties to a bank that has been a venerable institution in San Francisco is not taken lightly. "But this is like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," said city Su- Eervisor Michael Yaki. "They have ept the bank's name but the eyes looking out are not the eyes of the old Bank of America. If we determine this is not the Bank of Ameri it-- Cuts fromIE For Times home delivery, call 1-800-388-4637 business like it has elsewhere.

McColl, the force behind NationsBank's emergence as a national powerhouse, has decided that NationsBanc Investments president Henry Rose will be president of the new unit when it is launched. Schildz said he does not know what will happen to Rose's counterpart at BA Investment Services, Jim Albo. "Right now, he's deeply involved in running BA and that's what we're focused on. They're still separate affiliates," Schildz said. "We're not that far." to manager David Sisemore, who could not be reached for comment.

Brokers and support staffers who received pink slips Thursday were counseled to apply for openings elsewhere in the company. Schilz said the bank has not decided what the combined brokerage unit will be called nor when the merger of the two will occur. Chief executive Hugh McColl, however, is making it clear that his NationsBank is calling the shots in this part of the merged Schildz said cuts were based on how brokers could be deployed more efficiently, not solely on the number of employees in each region. Bank officials would not break down the number of jobs cut in each region. In Florida, NationsBanc Investments has offices in Tampa, St Petersburg, Orlando, Jacksonville, Sarasota, Fort Myers, Miami, West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale.

Calls to the Tampa and St Petersburg offices were referred A arm. As of June, there were 1,070 brokers nationwide at the two units: 670 at NationsBanc Investments and 400 at BA Investments. Florida, a key banking and investment colony for the old NationsBank, doesn't have an overlap problem. NationsBanc Investments may be omnipresent but there are no brokers from the former BankAmerica. That didn't spare the state, fcowever, 4 tiPctcrsuwgSimcs Florida's Best Newspaper.