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Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Wednesday, October 4, 2000

Hilo Hattie gears up to open Arizona store

Hilo Hattie plans to open its third outlet on the mainland near Phoenix at one of the largest shopping malls in Arizona on Nov. 22.

The new outlet, to be located in Arizona Mills in Tempe, will sell Hawaii-style fashions, gifts, foods, and Hawaiian and South Pacific jewelry. The retailer said the 22,000-square-foot store will be its largest in the United States.

Hilo Hattie, founded in 1963, operates six stores in Hawaii, one in Guam, one in Anaheim, Calif., and one in Nashville, Tenn. All three mainland stores are tenants of shopping centers built by the Mills Corp.

Hilo Hattie also plans to open stores soon in Kihei, Maui, and Waikiki.

Big Island Abalone appoints president

The Big Island Abalone Corp., a Kona marine biology and ocean science company, has appointed Michael Buchal as president.

Buchal, who joined the company in 1998 as vice president, has been pivotal in moving Big Island Abalone from the development stage into full production, the company said. Construction has begun on a 60-acre aquafarm.

Safeway warehouse workers reject pact

TRACY, Calif. -- Workers at a giant warehouse that serves Safeway Inc.'s 19 stores in Hawaii and 226 other Safeways in Northern California and Nevada voted overwhelmingly today to reject a contract offer .

However a spokesman for their union, Teamsters Local 439, said that the workers at the Summit Logistics Inc. warehouse are not currently planning a strike at the Tracy, Calif., facility.

Workers voted 1,146 to 142 to reject the offer, which would have given them a 4 percent pay hike over the next five years, a 10 cent-an-hour hike in pension benefits and a guarantee that health insurance costs stay level for five years.

Summit President Martin Street said he was surprised the vote was not closer and disappointed by the rejection. Summit officials were to meet today to decide their next move. The contract expired at midnight Sept. 27. The union was authorized to strike if no agreement was reached by then, but it put off the strike to review the new proposal and schedule today's vote. Beagle anticipated that a strike would shut down the warehouse. If a strike is called, the company says it will begin using the 1,400 replacement warehouse workers and 250 drivers it has put up in local hotels in the area around the warehouse.

In other news . . .

NEW YORK -- The board of directors at AT&T Corp. is reportedly in favor of spinning off the company's struggling consumer long-distance business to shareholders rather than selling outright what was once a core unit of the telecommunications giant, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

NEW YORK -- Walt Disney Co plans to revamp its consumer products unit at a cost of $300 million, including changing the look of over 600 stores worldwide and closing the remaining 140 stores as their leases expire, the Wall Street Journal reported in its electronic edition today. The company plans to move beyond character-based goods based on characters like Mickey Mouse, with more in "adult-oriented merchandise" with a focus on parenting, the newspaper said.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Firstar Corp. is buying U.S. Bancorp for about $21 billion in stock in a deal that would create the nation's ninth-largest banking company.