The Bradenton Herald from Bradenton, Florida • 73

The Bradenton Herald Sunday May 4 1986 'ax blto at the eedtfism blossoms i i Company grows with wildflower demand rtw average state tax on a gallon of gaa In the Is 125 cents Florida the state with the lowest tax tacks on only 4 cents per gallon The state levying the most per gallon Is Washington adding 18 cents to the coat of every gallon mTE8M0UKTM In cenfa per gallon excluahte of any heal or federal chargee as of march 7088: Dee Milatein earned a degree in medical technology and immediately decided I was in the wrong She met her husband just aa hie avocation was becoming ids work As vice president at Applewood she works on developing new prod- ucts and writes much of the printed material the company produces Despite the slick catalogs and surroundings some parts of Applewood remain a lot like the days when Milstein ran it from his house Much of line is still wfeighed mixed and packaged hy hancLRainguet said The company lists 82 species of wildflowers in its latest catalog including a dwarf and regular columbine There are three canned mixes that include more than a dozen types of wildflowers two of them including grasses to create a meadow effect The offers flowers in two heights CNewsAmarica Syndicate IMS Pines Golf Club south of Denver had Applewood put together a mix of red white and blue wildflowers staff botanists Katneryn See and Sandra White sometimes confer with landscape designers for weeks to ensure a customer gets what he wants Among the details See and White need before compiling a are the height of flowers wanted the colors the blooming seasons desired spring summer or fall and the amount of water that will be available naturally once a stand is established Each January White must place orders for seed that will not be sold until the following year If she makes a mistake and there is seed left over in a season it will be used first the next year keeps well White said noting low humidity and the cod temperature of the seed-storage roam not like cream Individual states have varying standards for germination of certain seeds Applewood insists that its seed exceed the highest such standard by at least 10 percent White said The privately hel(J company keeps its sales figures secret Thare are 15 full-time employees and 15 part-timers who handle pafcging said Debbie Rainguet product coordinator When Milstein sold those first columbine seeds he was a dropout from the University of California at Berkeley helping his parents with their Denver-area retail clothing store In his spare time he experimented with hybridization in a greenhouse he had built at Ids home and volunteered time at the botanic gardens Today he is president and general manager and oversees research efforts and needs his wife says ARVADA Colo The roots of Applewood Seed Co stretch back to a day in 1965 when Gene Milstein bought a one-pound package of columbine seeds someone else had gathered in the wild Milstein divided that pound made up small packets and stuck them in the gift shop at the Denver Botanic Gardena sold like says his wife Dee Milstein When the first seeds were gone Milstein gathered more The plain paper packages were improved when his mother made line drawings of the enhmiliiw than other wildflower varieties as Milatein expanded what he still considered a hobby To pump up interest when Milatein decided to take his wares to a trade show in 1968 Dee Milatein hand-colored the seed packets Today in wood-paneled corporate offices lined with brilliant photographs and pen-and-ink drawings of wildflowers the Milateina reign over a flowering company Individual species arrive in large burlap bags at Applewood from as 'far away as India More then half come from European where seed js raised as a crop supply of blue columbine state flower is grown commercially in the stats In a room where the temperature remains 58 degrees year-round Tiber Kubanyi uses a giant feed mixer or plastic wading pods to make the mixes and special orders The Ohio Highway Department cently purchased 2100 pounds of seed to beautify tor example recent hundreds of acres of land near major highway intersections A national park in Cnifs ordered wildflowers to cover 10 acres' Landscape designers at Castle No-frills shopping produces plenitude for penny-pinchers pump retailing concept that is sweeping the country The success and its numerous clones illustrates what Sarah Stack a retailing industry analyst at Bateman Eichler Hill Richards a Los Angeles-based brokerage calls the of shoppers into two groups: those who want rock-bottom prices and those who want service Before shoppers rejoice over a case of Dom Perignon they'll have to meet the membership requirements Price Clubs are open roly to its LI million members who pay an foe of up to $25 A One reason Price prices are so low is because it buys and sells in bulk For instance the rimin is among the top 10 U8 sellers of Michelin tires and candy But the biggest reason behind the low prices is low overhead On average each store sells its entire stock every two weeks which nwna low inventory costs Moreover the sales and general administrative costs are only 7 percent of sales far below the 10 percent to 11 percent expense margins chalked up by other discount warehouse operations says Ken Peaplman a retailing analyst at Shaarsro Tubman Bros fa New York All of this obviously translates into sweet tidings for the shareholders The company earned its investors a 35 percent return on shareholder equity last year putting it at the top of the Forbes list of most profitable publicly held knee-high or low-growing plus a blend designed vx partially Since 1971 Applewood has add houseplant and herb seeds In 1978 the company came out with kits to make it easy to grow edible sprouts in the kitchen In 1980 plastic bags with seeds and growing mixtures were unveiled 1 The Sof-Pot line now includes catnip and gnus for cats herbs and flowwing plants for both inside and outdoors This year the push is on more than 15 species of wildflowers rooted in a sod base The company also has produced wildflower plants that can be purchased in eight- or 72-pack flats The latest products Milstein hopes will lure home and professional gardeners not interested in starting from seed rosy future Business leader paints The discount warehouse is sweeping across the nation Shoppers cast comfort to the wind it's bargains they want i CHRIS KRAUL KnkSiHXrfrtsr Newspapers SAN DIEGO You have to (kero a watchful eye for speeding forklifts when you shop at the Price Club the no-frills discount warehouse cm Morena Boulevard The vehicles dart through the' cavernous 185000-square-foot warehouse with pallets foil of wine tires breakfast cereal IBM typewriters and thousands of other items They barge their way among shopping carts and the 25-foot-nigh shelves often at breakneck speeds Dodging forklifts the only discomfortshoppers must endure at any of the 24 stores Checkout lines typically are long parking lots are congested and the warehouses are aweheringly hot fa the summertime Customer service non-existent But then shoppers come to Price Club for bargains not creature comforts Whether it be Dom Perignon champagne Wodite detergent Mimsingwear T-shirts or Samsonite luggage shoppers come to Price Club to pay 10 percent to 40 percent less thro a traditional retro outlet would charge The shoppers coming fa such large numbers have made the Price Club the leader fa the and remain healthy through 1987 and 1988 he said Albertina spoke to members of the Independent Business Association of Wisconsin at its annual meet- Global strategies are helping American Industry a co-founder of the American Busings Conference says ingThureday The drop in i tiou far Albertine said economy we at Farley find is in very sound Albertine said But some sectors remain troubled he said The major problem is the Washington budget deficit be a particular drag on the economy fa the short Albertine said But a lot will get fa the absence of a Gramm-Rudman law he said an economic crsis will force Congress to impose pain on any constituent he said Albertine co-founded the American Business Conference with Arthur Levitt chairman of the American Stock Exchange interest rates and infla-anything Congress The decline of the dollar aboard and lower labor costa will' help restore the manufacturing sector during the third and fourth quarters of the year according to a co-founder of the American Business Conference John Albertine an economist who is vice chairman of Chicago-baaed Farley Industries said part of the revival will come from a management that there is now a global American managers now understand that the of business is teamwork labor and management working The economy will have a strong second half in 1986 US companies As a result the stock has been red hot since it began trading publicly at $26 fa June 198a Since then it has split 86 times and is wroth an eyepopping $1692 a spokesman says Indeed Price Co has flown so 1 high so fast that many analysts predict a fall saying that the retailing concept is easy to copy and thus vulnerable to cron-petition Competitors are indeed escalat- fag Among the biggest is Costco Wholesale Crop a 21-store Seattle-based chain Started fa 1983 far a group that included former Price Co executives Costco grew to $371 million in sales last year and expected to crone dons to doubling that figure fa fiscal 1986 which ends Aug 81 Other major Price Co competitors include the Warehouse division of Wal-Mart Stores which now has 23 warehouses that last year generated about $700 million In sum Pace Warehouse Inc of Aurora Cola now has 18 stores open and reported revenues of $275 million for the fiscal year ended Jan 31 Increased competition is a big reason Price Co says its growth rate will drop to 35 percent this year says Bo Cheadle a retailing analyst at Montgomery Securities fa San Francisco But Cheadle notes that Price sales per store is still twice that of its closest com Deti tors 1 And to date the only warehouse chain profitable with the possible exception of rlmro says From F-6 1.