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For Travel and Tourism, Hiring Is on the Rise, Cautiously

January 24, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The industry — which includes hotels, rental cars, airlines and entertainment — shed jobs quickly as the economy spiraled downward. But in the last year or so, travel businesses have begun to hire again, albeit slowly and cautiously.

“Clearly, the travel and tourism industry suffered pretty heavily during the downturn,” said Adrian Cooper, chief executive of Oxford Economics, a London-based economic forecasting consultant with offices in New York. “Now we’re seeing an improvement in jobs in travel and tourism. It’s one of the healthiest sectors in the United States, and down the supply chain. There is still some ways to go, getting back to the peak in 2007.”

But, he added, “we see it outpace other sectors.”

One beneficiary has been Maria Sutherland, a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, who has lost two jobs in the retail fashion business in the last two years. “I needed something where I was going to be secure,” Ms. Sutherland, 23, said.

So in September, after losing her second job when a retail store closed, she applied for the job of “insider” at the W Hotel in Union Square, to help guests secure hard-to-get restaurant reservations or theater tickets. In early December, she got good news. “I was ecstatic,” she said.

In the first half of 2011, the travel industry added 16,000 jobs a month, on average, though that slowed to an average 2,000 new jobs a month from July to November, said David Huether, senior vice president for economics and research for the U.S. Travel Association. Total employment reached a low of 7.3 million jobs in December 2009, and since then the travel and tourism industry has gained 224,000 jobs.

Two factors drive travel jobs, Mr. Huether said. International travelers to the United States support one of every eight travel jobs, while domestic travel supports the rest.

Even with the early signs of a recovery in the industry, said Henry H. Harteveldt, co-founder of Atmosphere Research Group, an airline and travel industry analyst based in San Francisco, “it’s been a very tentative recovery marked by a lot of financial and organizational discipline” by employers.

As to the travelers themselves, “travel is very opportunistic,” he said. “It’s discretionary. ‘I am going to keep a very tight grip on my wallet,’ is what people are saying.”

Bjorn Hanson, divisional dean of the Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University, offered a similar assessment of the hotel industry. “It’s a recovery but not an impressive recovery,” he said.

Putting the situation in perspective, occupancy for 2009 was 54.6 percent, according to Smith Travel Research, almost the lowest since the Depression. (The lowest was 53.4 percent in 1971.) Occupancy for 2011 was 59.8 percent and is projected to climb to 61 percent in 2012, Smith Travel Research said. Employment in the airline industry suffered, too, in the weak economy. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics, part of the Transportation Department, calculated 28 consecutive months of decreases in full-time employment for airlines, leading up to November 2010. Finally, in December 2010, employment began to improve.

Cruise capacity has also been growing, and is projected to grow 5 percent from 2011 to 2012, Mr. Harteveldt said.

The health of the travel industry affects related businesses, Mr. Cooper of Oxford Economics said, noting that the “supply chain to the travel industry is quite long.” Demand for air travel, for instance, affects not only airlines but also plane and parts construction and jet fuel.

Wages vary but even at entry level tend to be higher than minimum wage. Randy Pullen, president of Wage Watch, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., said there were “not many of those” minimum-wage jobs in the travel and hospitality industry. Even housekeepers, he said, make more than minimum wage, and tend to make more in cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington and Seattle. In Arizona, they may make $10 plus tips, whereas in New York, it is $10 to $12. A bellman can make minimum wage plus tips for a total of $35,000, Mr. Pullen said.

Hotels have also been able to take advantage of the downturn, said Joseph McInerney, president and chief executive of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, by hiring people with a higher level of education and sophistication, like those with bachelor’s degrees from Cornell School of Hotel Administration or Florida International’s hospitality and tourism school.

The prognosis for 2012 is “very positive,” Mr. McInerney said. Job seekers may not be able to get their dream job initially but can work their way up, he said.

Sharae Martin, 21, started work last Thursday at the new Greater Cleveland Aquarium. “It’s very exciting to me because to me it feels like I am getting my independence back,” Ms. Martin said.

She said she was looking for a job in customer service when she heard that the new aquarium was hiring.

Though her goal is to become a pharmacist, for now she is happy to be working. “Now that I have a job, I’m secure,” she said. “I feel very good about my position in life right now.”

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Bits: Apple Unveils App and Tools for Digital Textbooks

January 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News

10:29 a.m. | Updated Adding more details as the press conference progresses.

Apple wants students to bid farewell to the days of lugging around backpacks of heavy textbooks, and to welcome the iPad tablet as their new all-in-one reading device.

On Thursday the company released iBooks 2, a free app that will support digital textbooks that can display interactive diagrams, audio and video. At a news conference, the company demonstrated a biology textbook featuring 3-D models, searchable text, photo galleries and flash cards for studying. Apple said high school textbooks from its initial publishing partners, including Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, would cost $15 or less.

“Education is deep in our DNA and it has been from the very beginning,” said Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, at the event at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Apple also announced a free tool called iBooks Author, a piece of Macintosh software that allows people to make these interactive textbooks. The tool includes templates designed by Apple, which publishers and authors can customize to suit their content. It requires no programming knowledge and will be available Thursday.

The company also unveiled the iTunes U app for the iPad, which allows teachers to build an interactive syllabus for their coursework. Students can load the syllabus in iTunes U and, for example, tap to open an electronic textbook and go directly to the assigned chapter. Teachers can use iTunes U to create full online courses with podcasts, video, documents and books.

Apple’s push into textbooks brought with it far less buzz than is usual with the company’s new product announcements, in part because of an unusual spoiler. In “Steve Jobs,” the biography that was published in October shortly after Apple’s former chief executive died, Mr. Jobs declared that he wanted to transform the textbook market with the iPad.

Mr. Jobs told the book’s author, Walter Isaacson, that he wanted to hire well-known textbook writers to create electronic versions of their books. He said that Apple could sidestep the state certification process for K-12 textbooks by making them available free for iPads.

By most estimates, Apple has not captured as much of the electronic book market with the iPad and its iBookstore as its chief rival in the business, Amazon, has with the Kindle e-reader.

But while Amazon was a much earlier entrant into the e-books business, it has been less successful in the education market.

Amazon in 2009 announced plans to target the textbook publishing industry with the Kindle DX, a larger version of its e-reader. Not only did Amazon fail to make a dent in the digital textbook market, it also did not impress students. For instance, at Princeton, one of the universities that offered a Kindle DX pilot program, students complained about the device’s sluggishness, lack of color and limited interactivity, according to the university’s student newspaper, The Daily Princetonian.

Education is where Apple has an advantage against Amazon. Apple has a deep and longstanding connection with the education market that could serve it well as it enters the textbook business. Even as its Macintosh computers were shunned by big purchasers of technology inside corporations in decades past, Apple found success selling them to K-12 schools and colleges.

The advent of the iPad and iPhone, along with a resurgence in the growth of the Mac, has made Apple products an even more ubiquitous sight on campuses than they are in the general population.

Before Apple formed official partnerships with textbook publishers, some universities had already embraced the iPad as an experimental learning tool for the classroom. In 2010, Seton Hill University, George Fox University and Abilene Christian University began pilot programs, in which students received iPads as part of their tuition and instructors were trained to use mobile software to teach their courses.

The base price of an iPad is $500, but that cost is inconsequential when considering the lower prices of digital textbooks purchased through iBooks, says Bill Rankin, a professor of medieval studies at Abilene Christian University. In 2008, Mr. Rankin helped start a pilot program in his school where students and teachers used iPhones in the classroom. He explained that textbook publishers typically mark up the prices of print textbooks by six times, because they predict the books will be resold six times, and therefore students would quickly get their money’s worth after purchasing iPads.

Mr. Rankin predicted that with digital textbooks, publishers will realize they can sell more titles for less money, which would drive down overall costs of textbooks both in print and digitally.

He called Apple’s new education apps and tools “revolutionary,” because they give teachers, authors and publishers the ability to create and share books easily. He compared this to how Apple’s App Store democratized the way software was distributed.

“This is something we’ve been dreaming about for years,” he said. “And to see the first steps of this being realized is immensely exciting.”

However, an executive at CourseSmart, an electronic textbook provider that offers digital textbooks for the iPad, iPhone and Android devices, said in response to Apple’s announcements that it was an issue that the company’s digital textbooks would be exclusively available for Apple products.

“Based on the fact that you have to mandate a specific device, that’s going to be difficult for school districts to decide students are going to take their strained budgets to purchase these devices,” said Jill Ambrose, chief marketing officer at CourseSmart, in an interview.

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Square Feet | The 30-Minute Interview: The 30-Minute Interview — Fred J. Schmidt

January 4, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Previously, Mr. Schmidt was the senior vice president for business development and operations for Coldwell Banker Commercial.

Interview conducted and condensed by

VIVIAN MARINO

Q. Coldwell Banker recently re-established a commercial office in Manhattan, about a year after the closing of Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy, which had a commercial operation.

A. When I took over as the president of the company last year, our New York office had just signed on the Realta Group; it’s a franchise and affiliation owned by Peter Sabesan and Richard Selig. They both have a long tenure in the business. In my prior role, I was part of the process of initiating that growth.

Q. How important is it to have a New York presence?

A. It’s a fulcrum for us, as it is in our industry, in terms of the gateway of companies coming in internationally.

Q. How active is that office?

A. It’s very active. Their property management has grown by 30 to 40 percent.

They’re managing throughout the New York metro area and actually throughout the United States. I don’t have total statistics. I think it’s more in that medium-sized square footage and marketplace.

They’re more of a tenant rep. Some of their tenants include the American Cancer Society, American Express, Bally’s Fitness, Bank of America, the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Q. Why did Coldwell Banker Commercial decide to franchise that office instead of own it?

A. To grow it organically or to buy someone, frankly, was just not something that was in the cards. We try to find the best qualified companies to do that, and to grow from there.

We get the franchise fees, the growth of the network — New York is so mission critical to supporting business throughout the United States. When you’re looking at many of the businesses that are located here, they’re exporting business all around the U.S. and the globe. A lot of times they may have real estate needs elsewhere.

Right now we’re working with a major warehouse and distribution firm in the fashion industry that has a 200,000-square-foot requirement out in Los Angeles. The company is headquartered in New York, so that business is exported from Manhattan. I can’t tell you the name of the company; I have a nondisclosure. Q. What kind of fees does Coldwell Banker Commercial receive from its franchisees?

A. Typically it’s 6 percent of the gross commission income. And they get all the services: the resources of our global client solutions group, technology, the branding, the name, advertising and marketing.

About 30 percent of our offices are company owned, and the balance are franchises. We also have three offices in New Jersey, two in Connecticut and three on Long Island.

Q. How was business last year?

A. I can’t give specific numbers, because that’s within the overall organization, but we’re mirroring what’s going on with the rest of the industry: 2010 was an improvement over 2008 and 2009, and 2011 was an improvement over 2010.

The retail sector for us has actually been surprisingly active — even though retail has been at an all-time high in terms of vacancies. Multifamily has been as hot as a pistol. The office sector is employment driven, but we’re actually seeing pretty good activity around the country as a result of companies looking to upgrade from Class C to B or from B to A space. They can lower their costs over all because of the relatively high vacancies.

Q. What’s your outlook for 2012?

A. Slow to steady growth over all — given the macroeconomic factors that we’re all seeing over the last 90 days, the sovereign debt crisis and everything else.

Q. What are your plans for growing the company?

A. In the next 12 to 14 months, I’m looking to double or triple what we’re doing right now in the Northeast corridor, from Washington to Boston.

With a lot of market-driven change in the industry, there’s a tremendous amount of opportunities for mergers and acquisitions. We’ve been looking at other brokerages and bringing competitors on. A lot of folks operate their own businesses as entrepreneurs, but they’re seeing that to compete effectively in the market, the need to bolt onto a larger organization, yet still maintain their entrepreneurial spirit. Others have been running their businesses for many years and are looking at exit strategies.

This is where I spend most of my time, by the way. We have target markets, and an A, B and C list of individual companies.

Q. What kind of reaction have you received so far?

A. It’s actually been very positive — about 70 to 80 percent are still interested in talking to us on an ongoing basis. I would say we are talking in the hundreds in the whole United States, and in the Northeast corridor, 35 to 40. I can’t tell you the names.

Q. Were you always interested in real estate?

A. I started when I was 24 years old. My grandfather was a developer — he developed houses first and then garden apartments in New Jersey. Then I was in sales. Q. Do you invest in real estate personally?

A. I invest through REITs because they’re liquid. I use those investments to pay for my kids’ college.

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Business Briefing | Company News: Teva Names a New Chief Executive

January 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries of Israel named Jeremy Levin of Bristol-Myers Squibb as its next chief executive, replacing Shlomo Yanai. Mr. Levin, 58, a doctor educated at the University of Cambridge, worked at Bristol-Myers as senior vice president for strategy, alliances and transactions. He will take over as president and chief in May, Teva said in a statement, after Mr. Yanai, 59, retires. Teva’s shares plunged last year amid mounting competition for its No. 1 drug, a branded multiple sclerosis medicine called Copaxone. Mr. Yanai, a former Israeli army general with no previous pharmaceutical experience, spent $6.5 billion last year to buy the American biotechnology company Cephalon, then told investors in December that Teva might not able to meet its long-term target of $31 billion in sales by 2015.

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PBS Shifts Tactics to Reach Wider Audience

January 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Emboldened by the success of the British period drama “Downton Abbey,” one of the most critically acclaimed shows on television, PBS now faces the challenge of translating the buzz and enthusiasm for the show into donations to local stations and public financing. A stodgy pledge drive or traditional pleas for contributions would probably fall flat with viewers. So, PBS decided to fit “Downton Abbey,” which begins its second season on Sunday, into a broader effort to spruce up its prime-time lineup.

The goal is to attract new viewers to PBS and make audiences think of public television more like the top-tier programming of HBO, Showtime and other channels they are willing to pay for. “Think of PBS and the local stations as premium television on the honors system,” said John Wilson, senior vice president and chief television programming executive at PBS.

Around the time the first season of “Downton Abbey” had its premiere on the “Masterpiece” anthology series last January, PBS began taking a more strategic approach to programming. It has branded nights with clusters of shows about one subject — for example, the arts, science or the literary imports from “Masterpiece.” The anthology introduced younger and more male-skewing shows like “Sherlock,” a mystery series set in modern-day London that had its premiere in 2010, and a continuation of the popular British series “Upstairs, Downstairs.”

This fall, PBS embarked on a marketing blitz to promote Ken Burns’s “Prohibition” documentary miniseries, including a joint round-table discussion with Mr. Burns and the creators of HBO’s drama “Boardwalk Empire,” which takes place during the Prohibition era.

An aggressive promotional campaign helped “Downton Abbey” win six Emmy Awards, including best mini-series or movie, away from competitors on HBO and Starz.

“The thinking was that they had to up their game,” said Kliff Kuehl, president and chief executive of KCPT, a public television station in Kansas City, Mo. “That’s what we’ve evolved to — trying to give people that pay-TV moment.”

“Downton Abbey,” which follows an aristocratic English family and its nosy staff at a sprawling estate on the cusp of World War I, was first shown on ITV in Britain. It slowly built an audience in the United States after critics called it a “delightful romp.” Viewers who didn’t typically watch PBS tuned in.

The first season, consisting of four 90-minute episodes, had a nightly average of 4.9 million viewers, in contrast to 1.9 million viewers on an average night on PBS stations, according to Nielsen. The number of women ages 25 to 54 who watch “Masterpiece,” which typically has an average age of 64, was up 56 percent during “Downton Abbey.” More than one million viewers, mostly from the ages of 18 to 49, streamed “Downton Abbey” on PBS.org or via Netflix.

“It was the closest thing to water-cooler television as public television gets,” said Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of Masterpiece, produced by WGBH Boston.

A water-cooler show couldn’t come at a more critical time. The Budget Control Act, which ended the debt ceiling crisis in August, strips public television and others of a portion of federal financing starting as early as 2013.

In 2010, PBS had $571 million in total revenue, down from $624 million in 2007. (A PBS spokeswoman said annual revenue varies based on programming investments.) Federal financing for public television in 2010, through grants and appropriations to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, was $97.8 million, or 17 percent of PBS’s total revenue. That’s down from $121 million, or 19 percent, in 2007, according to audited consolidated financial statements.

States, meanwhile, under severe budget pressure, have cut financing for local public broadcasting stations. In Florida, Gov. Richard Scott, a Republican, vetoed $4.8 million in funds for stations. In April, Daystar Television, a Christian media group, announced its plans to buy WMFE-TV, a public station in Orlando. Since then, another local Orlando station, WUCF, has picked up PBS content. In January, KCET-TV in Los Angeles, citing financial problems, ended its 40-year relationship with PBS.

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The Boss: Diana Hirakawa of Riverain, on a Life in Science

December 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I grew up in Chicago, where my mom and dad met. I loved dogs, and they let me get one — a poodle — when I was 9. I had a green Schwinn bike with a basket on the front, and I used to ride around with the dog in the basket.

I attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for a degree in companion-animal biology. During that time, I got an internship at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. I worked in several areas, including the Mammal House, the Lion House and the Reptile House. I got a master’s in animal nutrition, also at Illinois, graduating in 1983, and stayed on there for my Ph.D. in nutritional biochemistry.

Having an assistantship helped pay my way through graduate school, but I received only $300 a month so I also sold hot dogs at a hot-dog hut. When my primary Ph.D. adviser found out, he said it wasn’t a good idea to have an outside job. I told him he’d have to find me more money if he wanted me to quit my hot-dog job, and he did. It was my first business negotiation.

At 24, I became a nutritionist at Iams, the pet food company. I hadn’t been sure that I wanted the job. Iams was relatively small, and some of its competitors had large research facilities. But my adviser raved about the company, and Clay Mathile, its president and owner at the time, interviewed me and said I could build a research facility.

My second day, an architect came to my office and we started designing the animal care center. It was one of the best work experiences I’ve had. I rose to senior vice president for research and development.

Clay sold the business in 1999 to Procter Gamble, and I stayed on for seven years as global vice president for pet health and nutrition. I wanted to work for a small company, and Clay made me another offer. In our global travel, we had seen that animals sometimes eat better than humans. He wanted to take what he had learned about pet food and apply it to human food.

In 2006, Clay hired me to turn his vision into reality, and I became president of the Mathile Institute for the Advancement of Human Nutrition, which helps alleviate world hunger. I still hold that position.

Clay also was an early investor in what would become Riverain, which makes tools for digital image interpretation. There were some issues with the technology, and he asked me to help resolve them. I joined the company as C.E.O., also in 2006. I hired a staff, and we changed the technology and received Food and Drug Administration approval.

Our first product is computer-aided-detection technology for lung cancer that identifies and marks areas in a digital chest X-ray that may be early-stage lung cancer. Our second product is a bone-suppression technology that subtracts the ribs in a digital chest X-ray to allow for a clear image of the soft tissue of the lungs. It enables early diagnosis of small lung nodules and has the potential to detect tuberculosis and other problems. My sister has breast cancer — also a soft tissue cancer — so the technology is personal for me.

We’re in a challenging market because many hospitals are floundering financially and there is limited financing for medical technology. Too often, it’s all about budget approval. If you want to be successful in the health care technology market, you need team members with the passion — and patience — to see their efforts through.

As told to Patricia R. Olsen.

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Digital Domain: For Libraries and Publishers, an E-Book Tug of War

December 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

But we can also guess that the number of visitors to the e-book sections of public libraries’ Web sites is about to set a record, too.

And that is a source of great worry for publishers. In their eyes, borrowing an e-book from a library has been too easy. Worried that people will click to borrow an e-book from a library rather than click to buy it, almost all major publishers in the United States now block libraries’ access to the e-book form of either all of their titles or their most recently published ones.

Borrowing a printed book from the library imposes an inconvenience upon its patrons. “You have to walk or drive to the library, then walk or drive back to return it,” says Maja Thomas, a senior vice president of the Hachettte Book Group, in charge of its digital division.

And print copies don’t last forever; eventually, the ones that are much in demand will have to be replaced. “Selling one copy that could be lent out an infinite number of times with no friction is not a sustainable business model for us,” Ms. Thomas says. Hachette stopped making its e-books available to libraries in 2009.

E-lending is not without some friction. Software ensures that only one patron can read an e-book copy at a time, and people who see a long waiting list for a certain title may decide to buy it instead.

Explaining Simon Schuster’s policy — it has never made its e-books available to libraries — Elinor Hirschhorn, executive vice president and chief digital officer, says, “We’re concerned that authors and publishers are made whole by library e-lending and that they aren’t losing sales that they might have made in another channel.”

Ms. Hirschhorn says the reason publishers didn’t worry about lost sales from library lending of print books is that buying a book is easier — no return trip is needed to the bookstore — and the buyer has a physical collectible after reading it. (One of my books was published by Simon Schuster in 2008.)

To keep their overall revenue from taking a hit from lost sales to individuals, publishers need to reintroduce more inconvenience for the borrower or raise the price for the library purchaser. If making the books more costly to libraries seems a perverse idea, consider that the paperback edition of a book provides an artificially costly experience for its buyers too, in terms of waiting time. The delay in the paperback’s availability permits the publisher to separate those book buyers willing to pay a premium to read the book earlier from those only willing to pay less for what is essentially the same thing, but later.

Ms. Thomas of Hachette says: “We’ve talked with librarians about the various levers we could pull,” such as limiting the number of loans permitted or excluding recently published titles. She adds that “there’s no agreement, however, among librarians about what they would accept.”

HarperCollins is the one major publisher that has taken the step of changing the traditional arrangements with libraries.

Beginning last March, it stopped selling e-books to libraries for unlimited use, which it had been doing since 2001. Instead, it began licensing use of each e-book copy for a maximum of 26 loans. This affects only the most popular titles and has no practical effect on others. After the limit is reached, the library can repurchase access rights at a lower cost than the original price.

The move was prompted, the company said in a statement, by concerns that continuing to sell e-books on the old, unlimited terms would “in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors.”

HarperCollins was brave to tamper with the sacrosanct idea that a library can do whatever it wishes with a book it obtains. The publisher’s action arguably benefits the most parties because it gives library patrons access to the latest titles in e-book form while still protecting the financial interests of publishers, authors and booksellers.

Robin Nesbitt, technical services director at the Columbus, Ohio, metropolitan library, says she does not object to HarperCollins’s limit. “At least HarperCollins allows me to have access to their titles,” she says. “I don’t mind buying a title and then might have to buy it again — I do that now with print.

“I know many libraries are mad because they think the 26 loans is too low — well, how do you know 26 is too low until you try it?”

Ms. Nesbitt adds, however, that many of the library’s patrons aren’t aware that other publishers are withholding e-books from it. She says it is hard “to explain to our patrons why we don’t have something.”

THE publishers that are holding back are watching for an industrywide approach to gel. But agreement doesn’t seem imminent. David Young, Hachette’s chief executive, says: “Publishers can’t meet to discuss standards because of antitrust concerns. This has had a chilling effect on reaching consensus.”

While many major publishers have effectively gone on strike, more than 1,000 smaller publishers, who don’t have best-seller sales that need protection, happily sell e-books to libraries. That means the public library has plenty of e-books available for the asking — no waiting.

Making those lesser-known books available to patrons renews libraries’ primary function: offering readers a place for discovery.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.

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In Rock Hall of Fame Vote, a Battle of Industry Egos

December 4, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Specifically, for a nod from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, where the stars who once filled our ears get another shot at immortality, or at least some big money.

With the recording industry under financial attack from many sides, one of the few ways for old acts to pique new interest is to be inducted into the hall of fame. So, each fall, managers and record labels dive into a mosh pit of monster egos, clashing tastes and rival interests in the industry, all in the hope of placing their artists among the royalty of rock. The 15 nominees for 2012 include The Cure, Donna Summer, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and Guns N’ Roses. Ballots are due on Sunday, and winners will be announced on Wednesday.

For the inductees, the reward can be enormous. Weekly record sales for a performer or band leap 40 to 60 percent, on average, in the weeks after selection, says David Bakula, a senior vice president at Nielsen SoundScan. While winning a Grammy often helps one album, a nod from Cleveland can lift an entire back catalog.

These days, labels and artists need all the help they can get. The music business is worth half of what it was 10 years ago, and the decline doesn’t look as if it will slow anytime soon. Total revenue from shipments of CDs, DVDs and other music products in the United States was $6.85 billion in 2010, according to the Recording Industry Association of America; in 2000, that figure topped $14 billion.

But the path to the hall of fame can be long and difficult. Controversy surrounds the selection process, which is shrouded in secrecy.

What is known is that a nominating committee of about 30 music critics, entertainment lawyers and recording executives winnows the field each year to 15 artists. Then another committee, this one of about 500 people, including past winners, selects five inductees. Artists can qualify for a spot 25 years after their first recording, which means that performers from the 1980s now have a chance to rank up there with Elvis. (The winners to be announced this week will be inducted at a ceremony next April.)

With fame and money at stake, it’s no surprise that a lot of backstage lobbying goes on. Why any particular act is chosen in any particular year is a mystery to performers as well as outsiders — and committee members say they want to keep it that way. The Bee Gees were passed over 11 times before being inducted in 1997; some fans and managers say the long wait reflected an anti-disco bias within the selection committees. And despite 27 studio albums and 45 years of touring, as well as a style that would influence many other artists, Alice Cooper was passed over 16 times before finally being inducted this year.

“When I wasn’t being nominated, I played it down all the time,” Mr. Cooper says. “But it really does make a big difference.”

He continues: “I used to think that when you got in, you’d understand how it worked, and how you get nominated — there would be a secret handshake, and there’d be a dossier about Area 51 and the president’s assassination.”

No such luck.

Rhino Records, which handles his back catalog, took advantage of his induction, however. It ran 30-second spots during the televised induction ceremony and made sure that Alice Cooper compilations, boxed sets and deluxe editions were available at Web sites and brick-and-mortar retailers. Mr. Cooper says the number of young people attending his concerts has jumped. So far this year, sales of his CDs, digital albums and other compilations are up significantly in the United States, to about 115,000 from 75,000 in all of 2010, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

THIS hall-of-fame effect is well established in the recording industry. For instance, sales of Bee Gees albums surged to 1.1 million in 1997, the year of the group’s induction, from 210,000 in 1996. Sales of Fleetwood Mac albums jumped to 3.2 million in 1998, when that band was inducted, from 483,000 in 1997, according to SoundScan.

In 2009, good news from Cleveland bolstered the career of Wanda Jackson, “the queen of rockabilly,” who gained fame in the mid-1950s and 60s. After Ms. Jackson was inducted, she collaborated on an album with Jack White of the White Stripes. Suddenly Ms. Jackson, who is now 74, was everywhere, opening for Adele’s 2011 tour and even rocking out, alongside Mr. White, on the “Late Show With David Letterman.”

“She had a phenomenal and, frankly, deserved refocus on her life and career,” says Joel Peresman, the president and chief executive of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation. “I think we give some really deserved artists another chance at the spotlight.”

Their labels get another chance, too. The biggest gains come for artists who, along with managers and record labels, aggressively promote their hall-of-fame status in music magazines and online. Many also rush out or reissue boxed sets, greatest-hits albums and commemorative CD-DVD collections.

“Because of the increased awareness, there’s definitely an increase in sales across their catalogs,” says Jane Ventom, senior vice president for catalog marketing at EMI Music North America.

Bands that split up near the peak of their popularity and then get back together for the induction ceremonies can reap the biggest rewards, because fans often dream of a big reunion tour, à la the Eagles.

“With certain artists, it really gives them another bite at the apple,” Mr. Peresman says.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=272e2e7f2bf234c12135cd675b1652db

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Cyber Monday Sales Give Retailers a Holiday Shopping Boost

November 29, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Last year was the first time that the Monday after Thanksgiving was the biggest online shopping day of the year by sales, and the first day that online spending passed $1 billion, according to comScore, a research company that measures Web use. On this Monday, early sales reports indicated that it could again be the best day of the season for e-commerce companies.

Though comScore did not release official sales figures on Monday, it said it expected e-commerce sites to reach $1.2 billion in sales, which would be a 17 percent increase over last year. IBM Benchmark, which tracks e-commerce sales, said they were up 15 percent.

“We believe that Cyber Monday is definitely going to be the biggest shopping day of 2011 online,” said Eric Best, chief executive of Mercent, which does online advertising and e-commerce on third-party marketplaces like Amazon.com for 400 brands, including Zappos.com and HSN.

Still, e-commerce analysts cautioned that strong Cyber Monday sales did not necessarily promise a merry online shopping season in a dreary economy. Instead, shoppers could be seeking deals because they are financially struggling.

“I don’t think that what happened is any telltale sign that people are breaking out their wallets,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, e-commerce analyst at Forrester Research. “A happy Web season doesn’t mean the economy is improving, just that people are becoming more mature from a technology standpoint and more savvy about finding good deals.”

Some online retailers took a rosier view.

“I don’t think we’re just pulling sales forward,” said Peter Cobb, co-founder and senior vice president of eBags. “I do think it’s a sign of a long, extended holiday season.”

Over all, online sales are expected to increase 15 percent this holiday season, more than last year and significantly more than the 2.8 percent increase expected offline. Shoppers spent about 38 percent of their total weekend budget online, a slight increase over last year, according to the National Retail Federation. On Black Friday, traditionally a bricks-and-mortar shopping day, people spent $816 million online, 26 percent more than last year, comScore said.

But many shoppers held out for Monday, when they expected deep discounts online. Seventy-eight percent of e-commerce sites offered promotions, according to Shop.org, an industry group. Almost half offered discounts, and a third had free shipping.

“We were all surprised last year when we saw it turned out to be the biggest day of the season,” said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore and an e-commerce expert. “But more and more retailers have become a part of the Cyber Monday kickoff, more and more consumers are aware of it and know there are special deals coming — and you put that together and you’ve got an important day.”

EBags, which offered 30 percent off handbags and luggage on Monday, said as of 7 p.m. Eastern time that sales were up 45 percent over last year, the biggest day in its history. Wayfair, one of the biggest online home goods retailers, reported a 30 percent increase in revenue midday, while sales at Ideeli, the flash sale site, were up 40 percent. Etsy, the online marketplace for homemade goods, said sales were up 80 percent.

Mobile shopping drove online sales on Monday, because people returning to work after the holiday shopped on their lunch break or under the conference table in a meeting, said Claudia Lombana, shopping specialist at eBay. As of 2 p.m. Monday, PayPal recorded a sixfold increase in mobile sales compared with last year.

“It shows the incredible lift of this day,” said Mr. Cobb. “This will be the biggest day of the season, the year and actually the history of the company.”

Stephanie Clifford contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=e8560d0d242bde986239f5de3a68a545

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Wal-Mart’s Profit Slips

November 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The strategy did enable Wal-Mart to break a run of nine consecutive quarters where sales at stores open at least a year in the United States had declined. Wal-Mart said its domestic same-store sales increased by 1.3 percent, above its prior projections. That compared to a 1.3 percent decline in the same quarter a year ago.

However, profit fell 2.9 percent from a year ago to $3.3 billion, making earnings per share come in at $0.96, two cents below analyst expectations.

Excluding the effects of inflation, Wal-Mart’s domestic same-store sales would have increased by 0.6 percent in the quarter, said Jeff Davis, senior vice president and treasurer, in a call with reporters.

Executives said that while visits to Wal-Mart’s stores in the United States fell from the same quarter a year ago, people were spending more per visit. Net sales for the country increased 2.7 percent to $63.8 billion.

The improving sales do not reflect a rebounding American consumer, though. Executives said the low- and middle-income shoppers Wal-Mart goes after are still under heavy budget pressure. They said Wal-Mart was bringing in a wide assortment of merchandise and keeping prices down to try to get them to spend.

“Our core customer was still impacted by high unemployment and continued uncertainty over the economy, leading to declining consumer confidence,” said William S. Simon, president and chief executive of Wal-Mart United States, in a recorded message, and that helped define Wal-Mart’s tactics.

“Cost increases in numerous categories were not passed on to our customers in the form of increased prices,” he said. “Our customers are still feeling pressured to reduce expenses wherever they can.”

A few indications of that pressure: Mr. Simon noted that layaway, which Wal-Mart began offering in October for certain holiday items, had been more popular than the retailer expected.

“Customer feedback on the return of layaway has been overwhelmingly positive and layaway transaction volume continues to exceed plan,” he said. “It’s a great way to help families on a budget shop for Christmas.”

Also, the retailer has seen some shoppers simply stop buying in categories that had gotten too expensive, such as produce, dairy and meat.

Mr. Simon said that inflation in those categories had risen about 4 percent during the quarter, though Wal-Mart had not passed on the full amount to its shoppers.

“In areas of higher price inflation, if a customer does not have a trade-down opportunity, they might just trade out,” Mr. Davis said.

Mr. Davis said Wal-Mart continued to see shoppers spending as soon as they received their paychecks, and to decrease spending as they got farther away from the paycheck dates. That suggests the shoppers do not have a lot of savings to help them out.

“Going forward we really would not expect anything different,” Mr. Davis said.

Michael T. Duke, the chief executive of Wal-Mart, said in prepared remarks that “customers remain concerned about jobs, and only one in 10 Wal-Mart moms that we surveyed view the state of the U.S. economy as good.  They want to save money.  They’re juggling credit cards, using coupons, and skipping restaurants and vacations. There is a real sense that the economic strain is taking its toll.”

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