The Record from Hackensack, New Jersey • B3

FRIDAY, MAY 26, 2006 BUSINESS THE RECORD B-3 NEW JERSEY Sealant plant doubling production Sika plans upgrades in Lyndhurst portation vehicles. It also manufactures additives to enhance the properties of concrete products, and its concrete repair products are sold in stores such as The Home Depot, Harms said. Sika products have been used to fill in cracks and seams in the Statue of Liberty, waterproof the Empire State Building and construct the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Harms said. The company says it is the largest producer of polyurethane sealants and adhesives in the world. Its competitors include Dow Chemical and RPM International.

By PRASHANT GOPAL STAFF WRITER A Swiss company will spend $17.8 million to double the capacity of its polyurethane sealant and adhesives plant in Lyndhurst. Sika complex, on Polito Avenue, includes the company's U.S. headquarters and its largest American adhesives factory. The upgrades will help the company focus on products used to bond windshields on cars, company officials said. The plant also will be able to modifying its buildings and upgrading its equipment to reduce costs and accommodate increasing demand for its products.

Sika, which has about 300 employees in Lyndhurst, does not expect staffing levels to change there. Harms declined to provide details about what specific changes would be made to the buildings or how many tubes of adhesives and sealants the plant will be capable of producing. The company's products are used in the construction of trans produce more sealants to waterproof buildings, highways, bridges, dams and reservoirs, said Steve Harms, senior vice president of operations for Sika. "This project is critical," Harms said of the two-year improvement plan. "This is a core product area for us." The company's powders and mortars manufacturing operations in Lyndhurst will be moved to other locations as part of a restructuring.

The company says it will be Sika $17.8 million project at its Lyndhurst plant is designed to help the company focus on products used to bond windshields on cars. N.J. 'Hot5 stores headed this way I A Massage Envy, which currently has this store in Florham Park, plans as many as 14 in North Jersey within a few years. Birth control that limits women's periods OK'd WOODCLIFF LAKE An extended-cycle birth control pill that limits women to just four menstrual periods a year received federal approval Thursday. The Food and Drug Administration approved Seasonique, spokeswoman Susan Cruzan said.

The pill is made by Duramed Pharmaceuticals a unit of Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc. The pill is similar to the company's Seasonale, which was approved by the FDA in 2003. Both include a standard birth control pill that's taken for 84 days. With Seasonique, however, women then take low-dose estrogen pills for seven days, instead of the sugar pills that accompany Seasonale and most other birth control pills. Winning approval for Seasonique may prove key for Barr, since a generic version of Seasonale could come on the market later this year, undercutting sales of that product.

Seasonique should be available for prescription sales in July, the company said. Seasonique is expected to cost about a dollar a pill, the same as Seasonale. The Associated Press Prudential closing accounts under $500 NEWARK Prudential Financial the manager of mutual funds at JennisonDry-den and Prudential Strategic Partners, will close accounts with less than $500 to cut costs. "Involuntary redemption" of the low-balance accounts will begin Nov. 10, the company said in a regulatory filing Wednesday.

Prudential, the second-largest U.S. life insurer, also will charge a $15 annual fee on accounts with balances of less than $2,500 starting Nov. 17, Prudential said. Closing accounts will reduce expenses for other shareholders, the company said in the filing. Bloomberg News Pearson buying Apple unit to develop podcasts UPPER SADDLE RIVER Pearson PLC, the world's largest educational publisher, agreed to buy Apple Computer Power-School division and develop content for teachers and children that can be played on iPod portable music devices.

Teachers will have access to podcasts to help with lesson preparation, and students will be able to load their iPods with study guides that are aligned with Pearson texts, the companies said in a Regulatory News Service statement Thursday. London-based Pearson and Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif, didn't disclose terms of the transaction. Pearson has operations in Upper Saddle River. PowerSchool's Web-based software provides teachers, students and parents with up-to-the-minute information on student performance, Pearson said in the statement. Pearson's share of the student information systems market will rise to 27 percent from about 20 percent as a result of the purchase.

Bloomberg News Award-winning chains eye sites in North Jersey By JOAN VERDON STAFF WRITER What do an upscale tea salon, a boutique for fashion-conscious canines, a members-only massage club, a trendy store for 'tween girls and a discount clothing store have in common? They've all been named among the hottest retail concepts of the year, and not one has stores in Bergen, Hudson or Passaic counties yet. But the Justice Just For Girls chain, which caters to customers from 7 to 14, has a location in Morris County, in Rockaway. And Massage Envy, which expects to have as many as 14 locations in North Jersey within a few years, also has a Morris presence already, with a franchise in Florham Park. Another is expected to open in Closter in September. Teavana also is moving into North Jersey.

It is scheduled to open a tea salon at Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus in early June. The annual Hot Retailers list is based on input from mall managers and marketing directors who were asked to name the tenants they'd most like to attract -stores with the power to draw shoppers. The five winners were named this week at the International Council of Shopping Centers convention in Las Vegas. The other winners are Muttropolis, a fledging pet boutique based in California with just four stores, and Cititrends Fashions for Less, a 253 -store chain that is well known in the Southeast. A Hot Retailer award can catapult young companies into the big leagues.

Steve Barry's, a youth-oriented clothing store that was one of the 2005 winners, doubled its stores from 60 to 120 last year and hopes to have close to 200 by the end of this year. "We found that winning this helped to establish greater credibility for our company," said spokeswoman Rachel Brenner. "It's one thing for Steve Barry's to say we're hot it's another level of validation when 3,000 industry professionals say it." Bob Weisman, regional developer for Massage Envy, said the award will make his job of finding locations for franchises in New Jersey even easier. "It's funny all of a sudden the landlords are coming after us," he said Wednesday, the day after the awards were announced at the ICSC convention. Weisman has lined up 23 Massage Envy franchisees in New Jersey in the past six months, and they are seeking locations, he said.

Weisman is the owner of a Massage Envy franchise in Florham Park that has signed up 800 members since opening in October. 'tween clothing stores prefers what the company describes as "convenient, off-the-mall shopping centers," but it alsohas locations in traditional malls such as Palisades Center in West Nyack, N.Y. It also has a store at Rockaway Town Plaza, a strip center located next to a traditional mall, Rockaway Townsquare. The chain is a division of Too a publicly traded retailer that operates 565 McCulley said the chain, which sells products nationwide through its Web site, is "looking to expand fairly rapidly" and hopes to have locations in North Jersey sometime in 2008. "From our online sales, we do know that there are a lot of pet parents there who like our products," she said.

Muttropolis defines its prime customers as shoppers who consider their pets to be part of the family and want dog collars, bedding, bowls and chew toys with more upscale designs than are normally found in pet superstores. Teavana, a tea store and tea shop that is something of a tea lover's answer to Starbucks, was launched in Atlanta, in 1997 and now has 43 locations in upscale malls around the country. The Westfield Garden State Plaza location will be the second Teavana shop in New Jersey, joining the Teavana at Bridgewater Commons. The fifth Hot Retailer winner, Cititrends Fashions for Less, was born in the 1940s as Savannah Wholesales, a company that sold women's hosiery and undergarments to stores in the Southeast The company opened its first store in 1958, and launched the Allied Department store chain. It changed its name to Cititrends Fashions for Less in 2001.

The company has 253 stores in the Southeast, Southwest and Midwest and three stores in Maryland, its closest locations to New Jersey. Cititrends is a publicly traded company. Spotlight on Retailing appears Fridays. E-mail: verdonnorthjersey.com Massage Envy salons are designed with many of the same amenities as upscale spas, but offer only one service -massage. Customers pay a $59 monthly fee that entitles them to one massage a month.

Additional massages cost $39. The chain is designed to be sort of an affordable, frequent massage club for consumers who don't want to pay $100 and up for spa massages, and who want a more convenient alternative to a spa. Massage Envy salons are located in neighborhood strip malls or supermarket-anchored shopping centers, rather than in enclosed malls. The reason? "Eighty percent of our customers are women," Weisman said. "We want to be where they are.

And a woman who's just had a massage doesn't want to walk through a mall; she wants to get in her car." The ICSC has been handing out the Hot Retailer awards for five years, and past winners include such mall powerhouses as Apple Stores, Coach and Build-A-Bear Workshop. This year's winners reflect the changes in the shopping-center industry by including retailers such as Massage Envy that prefer open-air strip centers to traditional enclosed malls. Whether they own strip centers or malls, landlords are looking for tenants to set them apart from the competition, and retailers such as Massage Envy "are filling that niche," said ICSC spokeswoman Patrice Duker. "It's all about diversification who can be different." The Justice Just For Girls chain of Limited Too clothing stores. The Justice division, with 108 stores at present, plans to open 65 to 70 new stores this year.

The Justice store at Palisades Center opened in August, and has proven to be a good draw, said Leemarie Dellaccio, marketing director for the center. She said the mall's parent company, Pyramid, is "talking to them about expanding in the rest of our portfolio." Hot Retailer winner Janet McCulley, co-founder of Muttropolis, which sells products geared to design-conscious dog and cat owners, said one change she's seen in the retail industry recently is that malls are becoming more pet-friendly. Two of her company's four stores are in open-air centers and two are in traditional malls. One enclosed mall in Tucson, was so eager to land a Muttropolis store that it created a pet zone near the store, with complimentary cleanup baggies for any accidents. THE RECORD 70 Hackensack direct marketer purchased Mokrynskidirect has 100 employees in Hackensack.

the business," Mokrynskidirect President Dennis Bessig said Thursday, referring to his company's acquisition by InfoUSA. "We've been on a rapid growth pattern at Mokrynskidirect." The company was approached by several suitors and cut a deal with InfoUSA By MARTHA McKAY STAFF WRITER Hackensack-based Mokryn-skidirect, a direct marketing company, has been purchased by InfoUSA, a publicly traded company based in Omaha, Neb. The deal, whose terms were not made public, was announced this week. Mokrynskidirect, founded in 1978 by owner Don Mokrynski, helps catalog and online clients bolster sales. this year, Bessig said.

Mokrynskidirect, which has 100 employees in Hackensack, will become part of In-foUSA's Donnelly Group, which has offices in Woodcliff Lake. Mokrynskidirect will remain in Hackensack, Bessig said. InfoUSA, which trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol IUSA, reported revenues of $383 million and a net income of $31.5 million in 2005. E-mail: mckaynorthjersey.com Mokrynskidirect is one of a number of list brokers that help fuel the catalog and online retail businesses by providing customer mailing lists compiled by one company to other companies looking to expand their mailing and e-mailing lists. About one-quarter of Mokrynskidirect's business is derived from online businesses and three-quarters from catalog companies.

"This is a very positive opportunity that we have to grow YTD YTD Name Last Chg Chg Name Last Chg Chg AEP Ind 33.31 33.2 ID Sys 20.47 .02 Inc 25.70 .24 4.9 IDT Corp 12.65 .26 8.1 Alpharma 23.70 1.13 Infcrssing 11.28 .09 31.0 AstaFdg 38.27 .87 40.0 IngerRd 45.28 .56 12.2 Audible 9.59 Innodata 2.36 AutoData 45.86 IntchgFS 22.65 .18 31.3 Avaya 11.58 8.5 JacksnHew 32.59 1.07 17.6 BkofAm 48.91 .43 6.0 JohnJn 60.45 .04 .6 BarrPhm 53.75 1.13 KearnyFn 13.76 .06 12.8 BectDck 60.71 .86 1.0 LakeldB 14.41 .50 BedBath 35.24 Lucent 2.57 BioRef 18.30 .28 MackCali 43.25 .27 1.6 BrMySq 24.61 .64 7.1 MedcoHlth 52.49 .55 Cambrex If 20.58 9.6 Merck 34.39 .45 8.1 CantelMed 13.62 .23 Movado 18.40 .19 .5 Celgene 40.44 1.19 24.8 Novartis 56.49 .63 7.6 Cendant 16.41 .23 PDI Inc 13.63 .05 1.0 ChildPIc 56.08 13.5 PNC 69.25 .58 12.0 Chubb 50.79 .31 4.0 ParPharm 23.45 .41 CogTech 61.30 .47 21.9 Pathmrk 9.39 .04 CmcBNJ 39.15 13.8 Pfizer 23.85 .01 2.3 CtlAir 24.62 .02 15.6 Prudentl 75.99 .24 3.8 CovantaH 16.05 .72 6.6 PSEG 62.48 .67 CurtisWrts 33.70 .09 23.4 QstDiag 56.96 .47 10.6 Cytec 56.44 1.47 18.5 RussBerr If 13.13 .25 15.0 DOV Ph 2.71 Sanofi 48.13 1.03 9.6 DRS Tech 53.26 .14 3.6 SchergPI 19.30 .18 Datascpe 35.09 .08 6.2 SealAir 51.12 .60 Emdeon 11.89 .53 40.5 UtRetail 14.16 7.7 EnglCp 38.70 .02 28.4 VlyNBcp 24.71 .26 7.7 GtAtPcs 25.25 .26 .4 VerizonCm 31.15 .40 3.4 GrtrCoB 15.50 4.0 VitalSgn 51.86 .16 21.1 Honwlllntl 40.54 .21 8.8 Vornado 90.99 2.15 9.0 HovnanE 32.81 .35 Wachovia 53.26 .23 .8 HudsCitys 13.74 .23 13.4 Wyeth 47.89 1.13 4.0 Vornado deal banking on Times Square retail By PRASHANT GOPAL STAFF WRITER Vornado Realty Trust has agreed to pay about $260 million for the retail, sign and parking garage components of the former Bertelsmann Building in Manhattan's Times Square. The Paramount Group plans to sell the 44-story building to Vornado and two other buyers for a total of $820 million and will make a $400 mil floors of New York office buildings, said Ryan Dobratz, an analyst with Morningstar. Demand is strong for retail in Manhattan, because there is far less shopping space per person there than in the rest of the country, he said. "Vornado is making a significant amount of investment into the street retail business in New York," Dobratz said. E-mail: gopalnorthjersey.com lion profit after having bought the building two years ago, Paramount said Thursday night.

Equity Office Properties and Lehman Brothers will buy the office portion. The 44-story building, at 1540 Broadway (between 45th and 46th streets), was built in 1990 as Times Square's redevelopment began. It contains 152,000 square feet of retail space, which is 60 percent occupied, Vornado said. The building's principal retail tenants are Virgin Records and Planet Hollywood. The office portion of the building is almost fully occupied, Paramount said.

The purchase is expected to close in the third quarter of 2006, Vornado said. Paramus-based Vornado has found a successful formula in putting retail on the bottom The Record 70 is a price-weighted index designed to measure the performance of the North Jersey economy. Index members are either based in New Jersey or have a large presence in the area, and have a minimum market capitalization of $25 million. The index was developed by Bloomberg News with a base value of 1 00 as of Dec. 31 1 999..