January 1999 Edition
HEAD OFFICES
Montreal has now supplanted Toronto as the business capital of Canada. In 1988, Toronto-based industrial companies accounted for 35 per cent of total assets of firms listed on the Financial Post 500 ranking of Canadian firms. Toronto has since lost ground to Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver--a casualty of the prolonged 1990s recession that hit Ontario especially hard, and of free trade policies that were opposed by many Ontarians but strongly supported in Quebec and Western Canada. As a result, Montreal now claims 35 per cent of the assets of FP500 firms, amounting to $273 billion up from 29 per cent a decade ago. Toronto follows with 27 per cent.
AMWAY
This direct marketer of vitamins, cosmetics and detergent is adding another product to its arsenal: natural gas. Amway is teaming up with a division of the Columbia Energy Group to market natural gas sales door to door, starting in Georgia. This partnership hopes eventually to sell electricity also. The sales of gas and electricity have long been tightly regulated but are slowly being deregulated around the country in the same way telephone service was opened to competition in the 1980s. Amway salespeople are to receive cash and other incentives for each customer they persuade to buy gas from Columbia.
RESPECT
In a recent Angus Reid poll which asked Canadians which professions they respect the most, small-business owners came out on top, followed by doctors, police officers, teachers, priests, judges and actors. At the bottom of the list of 13 professions were journalists, lawyers, federal government employees, labour leaders and politicians. Journalists were alone in registering a consistent decline when compared with previous such polls.
DYEING
More and more Canadians are colouring their hair. In 1997, they bought $130 million worth of colouring products, up 10 per cent from 1996. This year, sales are up a further 12 per cent. And its not just women. Sales of colouring products for men jumped from $6.9 million in 1996 to $9 million for the year ending September 1998. Experts put the trend down to baby boomers trying to conceal their age, especially in the workplace. However, technical advances in new products that are gentler on the hair are proving popular with consumers.
NAMES
The French are saying that if Britain wants to show it is sensitive to the rest of Europe, then it must rename London's Waterloo train station. Waterloo celebrates the Duke of Wellington's famous victory in 1815 over the French Emperor Napoleon and is the London terminal for channel tunnel trains arriving from Paris. French official have warned that if the change is not made then a Paris station may be changed to Fontenoy after a 1745 French victory over the British. Ironically, it was Napoleon who first proposed digging a tunnel under the Channel--to invade England.
INVENTIONS
Manufacturers of a new oven that combines high-powered microwaves and 80-kilometre-an-hour blasts of hot air, claim their invention can roast a chicken or a 500-gram steak in three minutes and steam vegetables in 90 seconds. A commercial version costing $23,000 is in production and tests are nearly complete for a domestic version to be made and marketed by Maytag though the price is still unknown.
SCENT
According to the New York Times Techno fragrances are the coming thing. A U.S. company is offering little bottles of real-world fragrances like Rubber, Dirt and Vinyl. The company is working hard on Gasoline, a fragrance that will offer less the raw smell of petrol than the "idea of gasoline." Dirt is the smell of the air after a sudden summer thunderstorm, while Earthworm, developed in response to customer complaints that Dirt didn't smell dirty enough, has a richer loamy smell.
PRESTIGE
A new study of workers with so-called dirty jobs--such as garbage collectors and grave diggers--found that a large percentage of them are proud of their work despite the stigma.
EARNINGS
In 1996, the average income of two-partner families in which both had earnings, returned to the record levels of 1989, while families with only one earning partner had an average income about 7% lower than in 1989. Overall, the average income of all two-partner families was $60,600 in 1996, up marginally from 1995 but still 3% lower than the peak year for income in 1989 (after adjusting for inflation). Their average had declined by 5% following 1989 before partially recovering to the 1996 level.
BUGS
A report in the Canadian Medical Journal claims that excessive levels of antibiotics that are fed to livestock on Canadian farms are spawning drug-resistant "superbugs" that in turn can cause serious illness. The report is the first to draw together the full extent of the links between the commercial use of antibiotics and the increased rate of serious infection and mortality worldwide. Pigs, chickens and cows are being fed anywhere from 100 to 1,000 times as much antibiotics as the human population, prompting the evolution of mutant strains of common bacteria such as salmonella that are resistant to virtually all known drugs.
SERVICE SECTOR
Services incidental to the water transport industry registered the highest level of profitability among the 20 service-producing industries between 1995 and 1997. Included are firms engaged in marine cargo handling, harbour and port operations, marine salvage, piloting ships and operating shipping agencies. Their return on capital employed averaged 13.7% during the three years. In second place were firms that provide take-out food services and catering services where returns averaged 11.5%. Least profitable in the services-producing group were the other scientific and technical services industry (1.9%) and the motion picture and video distribution and exhibition industry (2.6%).
PACKAGING
German beer sells better abroad in bottles than in cans, with British and U.S. consumers favouring the bottled variety while the French and Dutch prefer cans according to the German Federal Statistics Office. German brewers sold 181 million litres of bottled beer abroad in the first six months of 1998 compared to 141 million litres in cans.
APPLIANCES
Companies manufacture dozens of products from coffee makers to vacuum cleaners. The value of small appliances produced in Canada represents about one per cent of the nation's $31 billion electronic products industry. In 1996, 48 companies employed around 2,350 people. Production of small appliances is dropping. In 1990, $552 million worth of small appliances were produced. By 1996, this had dropped to $397 million while U.S. production was growing by 4.4 per cent.
LABOUR
A Chicago employment consultancy reports that in a tight U.S. labour market, a great salary is no longer enough to attract a skilled worker. Now, employers are offering to wash employees' cars, do their dry cleaning and walk their dogs. These and other "soft benefits" can make a big difference to an employee in a high stress job.
ENVIRONMENT
In 1995, businesses belonging to the environment industry in Canada had revenues of environmental goods and services of $10.2 billion. These revenues accounted for 53% of their total revenues of $19.4 billion. Businesses generated $4.2 billion of sales from environmental goods, $3.9 billion from environmental services and $2.1 billion from environment-related construction services. Provincially, Ontario led the way with revenues of $4.3 billion and Quebec followed with $2.7 billion. Small firms (under 100 employees) accounted for 67% of these revenues.
SINGAPORE
Singapore recently unveiled an ambitious five-year plan to try to teach nearly half of its entire work force skills needed to become more competitive in business.
CULTURE
Governments spent $5.7 billion on culture in the fiscal year 1996/97, down 2.8% from the previous year. When adjusted for inflation, total spending on culture by all three levels of government was down 3.1% from the previous year. It was the seventh consecutive year that spending on culture has declined in real terms.
COMPUTERS
The average car has about 10 on-board computers, in places such as the air bags, power train and radio; a high-end vehicle may have as many as 80.
HEALTH
While the cereal companies are enemies at the breakfast table, they are allies in a larger battle that could revolutionize food marketing in Canada and change the way consumers shop for groceries. The cereal makers are part of a powerful food industry lobby that is pushing for the right to link health claims to their products, which is currently prohibited under the Federal Food and Drug Act. If they succeed, it would change everything from the types of products sold to the way foods are packaged and advertised. For the food industry the stakes are high. It wants to capitalize on the boom in health foods, called nutraceuticals or functional foods, which generate estimated sales of $500 billion worldwide annually.
EFFICIENCY
A Harvard economist has assembled data from 150 countries to rate how efficiently their governments deliver goods and services, their levels of personal freedom and the degree to which their governments interfere in the private sector. Among the top countries are: 1. New Zealand, 2. Switzerland, 3. Norway, 4. Britain, 5. Canada, 6. Iceland and 7. the U.S. At the bottom: Zaire, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Haiti, Cameroon and Mali.
PUBLISHING
In 1993-94, publishers operating in Canada sold $1.2 billion worth of books to Canadian wholesale and retail outlets. By 1996-97, that figure had jumped to nearly $1.5 billion. Industry experts put this down, among other things, to the increased quality of books available and the higher profile of Canadian works. Other factors include the growth of the large bookselling chains and the Internet.
BARBIE
According to Fortune magazine, 2.5 Barbie dolls are sold every second, generating $1.9 billion (U.S.) in sales annually. Now, Barbie has expanded into clothing with skirts, shoes, jeans and pyjamas for real little girls. And coming soon: Barbie fashions for grownups including $350 sunglasses with a tiny B on the side to celebrate the doll's 40th anniversary.
AGEING
The quarter of the American population that will be over 50 years old at the turn of the century has an annual personal income approaching $1-trillion. These older Americans control fully half of the country's disposable income, 75 per cent of its financial assets (worth more than $8-trillion) and 80 per cent of its savings and loan accounts.
SMART
Every year the brightly lit skyscrapers of North America prove irresistible to migrating birds and huge numbers die after crashing into them. According to New Scientist magazine, their prospects are made even worse in Toronto by local seagulls which have learned to guide the birds towards the buildings so they collide with them. The gulls then feed off them.
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