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Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Monday, November 13, 2000

Kapolei Kmart employs 200

Kmart Corp. has opened a 135,000-square-foot Big Kmart outlet on Kamokila Boulevard in Kapolei, creating about 200 jobs.

Opened yesterday next to the Kapolei Entertainment Center, the store will provide housewares, fashions, over-the-counter medication, garden supplies and other items. Kmart now has seven Big Kmart stores in the isles, employing about 1,400 workers. Troy, Mich-based Kmart operates 2,164 retail outlets nationwide.

Cheap Tickets' CEO gets national honor

Michael Hartley, founder and chief executive of Honolulu-based Cheap Tickets Inc., has received the 2000 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for service.

Hartley, who founded Cheap Tickets in 1986 to sell airline tickets by telephone, was awarded the honor Saturday in Palm Springs, Calif., at Ernst & Young's 14th annual Entrepreneur of the Year conference.

Cheap Tickets has four call centers, 12 retail stores, 1,000 employees and a Web site, www.cheaptickets.com.

In other company news, Cheap Tickets said today it will offer its customers access to Dallas-based Hotel Reservations Network Inc.'s discount hotel accommodations through Cheap Tickets' toll-free phone number. The agreement expands a contract under which Cheap Tickets posts the hotel information on its Web site.

FedEx buy to boost ground-freight biz

FedEx Corp. is buying American Freightways for $950 million in cash and stock in a move that would expand FedEx's next-day ground freight delivery capability. FedEx, based in Memphis, Tenn., already owns Viking Freight which like American specializes in handling shipments of less than a truckload, which usually involves carrying freight from several companies on the same truck. Harrison, Ark.-based American Freightways is the fourth-largest in that segment of the delivery market while the combination with Viking would be second largest.

FedEx is to exchange $28.13 in cash and stock for each American Freightways share and will also assume $250 million in debt.