Canton man uses carpentry skills on TV

A Canton man's recent participation in a popular ABC TV show has him considering going back into his old line of work.

Mark Palmieri lent a hand to the show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" earlier this month.

He said the house the show was going to make over happened to be just two doors down from where his brother, Pete, lives in Woodlawn, Tenn.

"My sister-in-law called me and told me this was going to be happening. She suggested I come up to help out," he said.

The brothers helped out by putting their carpentry skills to work in a woodshop tent outside the house. There they made furnishings for a beach-themed room, including a boat bed and a seashell desk.

"My grandfather was a carpenter," Palmieri said, adding he put himself through college by working construction.

Working on the project was a pleasure for Palmieri.

"When you have people like (series designer) John Littlefield and (team leader) Ty Pennington give you the thumbs up like, 'Hey, you did a good job,' it felt pretty good," he said. "It was a good opportunity to work with my brother for a good thing."

The family being helped by the show was Trina Scott and her three daughters. Her husband, David, served with the U.S. Army Special Forces and, after being discharged, became a police officer. In 2002, he and his partner were on-duty when their police car was hit by a truck. Both David and his partner were killed.

"She is a single mom doing the best she can," Palmieri said, adding he and his brother put in 18-hour days on the project. "The house was full of termites. The house was coming down around them."

He described the final reveal of the newly renovated house to the family as "crazy emotional."

"It is really gratifying to know that you helped a family like that," he said.

Palmieri went into the construction business after graduating from college, eventually becoming a project manager for an Atlanta construction company until the economic slowdown caught up with him.

"A lot of the projects wound down," he said about the local construction market.

Working on the Scott home has helped push Palmieri back to his original trade of carpentry.

"I have been thinking about getting back to my roots," said Palmieri, who currently is not working. The show "reconfirmed what I was thinking."

Debenhams restarts refurbishment plan as group begins to feel more confident

Debenhams will restart its store refurbishment programme a year after it battened down the hatches amid the financial crisis.

In the latest sign that retailers are beginning to feel more certain about the economic outlook, the department store group said that it would begin investing in improving its stores again now that sales had stabilised.

It postponed the programme as sales plummeted last year, prompting criticism that the group was struggling under the debt mountain it was bequeathed by its former owners, CVC and TPG, the private equity groups.

Rob Templeman, chief executive, said that the investment would begin tentatively at first. He said: “At our peak we were doing, [up to] 20 a year. I don’t think I would go back to that level, but if you asked me to guess I would say half a dozen a year.”

Mr Templeman added that the stores would be competing with some of Debenhams’ own-label brands for capital expenditure. “Red Herring, Jeff Banks and John Rocha will all be getting a makeover this year, so there’s quite a lot of investment elsewhere,” he said.

He denied that the refurbishment programme was mothballed because of Debenhams’ debt pile, which had been whittled down this year from £994 million to £590 million with the help of a fundraising.

“The reason we stopped wasn’t a capital constraint. It was because we were seeing massive volatility in sales. It would have had a considerable impact on sales,” Mr Templeman said.

Sales at Debenhams fell 3.6 per cent on a like-for-like basis in the year to August 29, with total sales flat at £2.3 billion. The decline in sales was a result of devoting more space to ownlabel ranges, particularly the Designers at Debenhams lines.

The retailer, which has 144 department stores and ten smaller Desire by Debenhams stores, this year scrapped its dividend, which was 3p last year.

Lower sales volumes were more than offset by the improved profit margins available on exclusive ranges, including Butterfly by Matthew Williamson and H! by Henry Holland.

About 76 per cent of sales are now own-label, with Debenhams aiming for 80 per cent in the next two years.

Yesterday, the company announced that it was resurrecting the Principles brand, which it said would have a “designer twist”, after it bought it from Principles’ administrators this year.

The refurbishment of stores could be stepped up if trading improves. “We want to see what Christmas trading is like. We have got the financial capital to accelerate, but you do see disruption on sales as you do them,” said Mr Templeman.

The company expects customers to make another last-minute dash to the shops this Christmas. Festive trading has been getting later in recent years, analysts have said, driven partly by expectations of last-minute discounts from nervous retailers.

Mr Templeman said that, despite signs that shoppers were regaining their confidence, there would be no quick bounce back to pre-recession spending. “There are lots of reasons why consumers are in a better place. Equally, there are a lot of negative factors, not least VAT and fear of unemployment. Christmas will, I think, come late. I think that it will be competitive and promotional, and we will probably be in the heart of that — with planned promotions. I’m more in the positive camp than the negative camp, but it will be a tough old year.”

He added that falling property prices would help retailers to respond if there was a sharp economic recovery. “We have a low-cost environment that we haven’t seen for many, many years. If the economy does turn on a sixpence, we will see quite good momentum in retail,” he said.

Debenhams confirmed yesterday that John Lovering, its chairman, would step down in March. Mr Lovering was part of the management team that ran Debenhams under CVC and TPG, and helped to float it in 2006.

Shares in the company, which are up 224 per cent since the start of the year, fell 0.65p to close at 82.45p.

Source: business.timesonline.co.uk

Wollongong Central refurbishment to add 15 new shops

The $30 million refurbishment of Wollongong Central will add 15 new names to the complex's store directory, with most shops to open by Sunday.

Only a handful of the new additions in the shopping complex's northern wing will not be trading from November 1, weeks before the development was initially forecast to finish.

With new signage recently unveiled, many of the new tenants are now common knowledge, however additions yet to be announced include the trendy T-shirt shop T-Bar and the computer store Game.

New face for Wollongong Central

Up to 25 stores are expected to open by Sunday ahead of the beginning of a program of entertainment, sales and promotions to herald the refurbishment.

Another 19 shops have been relocated, most obviously Best and Less, now standing in the old Franklins site, and Priceline, which will move upstairs to where Uncle Pete's Toys used to be.

Development manager Steven Turner said the new fit-outs had surpassed expectation.

"We expected that a large number of (tenants) would complete new fit-outs, but there were far more than we originally anticipated and they are of a better standard," he said.

With temporary kiosks and further small changes planned, the shopping complex has gone from advertising "more than 140 speciality shops" to "more than 150" shops.

Eight original tenants have not returned, including a number of food stores deliberately excluded when plans for the West Keira development, on Keira St, were being drafted.

That development is now in limbo due to the global financial crisis.

"Ultimately the plans that we have approved for the development of the West Keira side contained a full supermarket and fresh food offer and ... we didn't want to start replicating," Mr Turner said.

Source: www.illawarramercury.com.au

Stewart Company helps launch the Big Business Refit

Earlier this month, The Stewart Company helped launch the Carbon Trust’s Big Business Refit which is giving out £100m interest-free to help small and medium companies modernise their businesses and slash their energy costs in the process.

In 2008, Stewart’s received an interest-free Energy Efficiency Loan of £56,000 from the Carbon Trust, to pay for a new cooling system. This year, Stewart’s heard that the Carbon Trust would provide further loans up to a total value of £400,000 for energy efficient equipment. Recognising future potential for energy efficiency, Stewart’s applied for two further loans totalling £344,000 to help replace three of its plastic moulding machines.

The interest-free loans are designed so that the energy savings from using the new equipment – which will total nearly £120,000 a year – will pay back the loan. Once the loan is paid back, savings go straight back into the business. Stewart’s smart approach of replacing old machinery will also cut 926 tonnes of CO2 from their carbon footprint, a key long term business objective.

Lee Mowle, CEO at The Stewarts Company said: "The installation of our new machinery and our national supply chain means we offer a winning combination of top-quality products and the certainty and stability of supply and pricing to our customers. This is particularly important in the current economic climate, when many of our customers are finding their pricing and supply sources from outside the UK uncertain."

Mowle added: "We are proud to be a British company and probably more so because we are a British manufacturer with a continuous investment in and commitment to innovation."

The Stewart Company has been established for over 64 years and is today a leading player in the gardening and catering industry, supplying over 1,000 customers including Wyevale, Dobbies, Wilkinson and Homebase. The company’s stock includes products such as bio flower pots, garden accessories, watering products, decorative planters and propagators.

The company made over £1 million in profit last year and is on course to do even better in 2009, much of which is being reinvested in new products and machinery to take the business forward.

Once listed on the London Stock Exchange, Stewart endured an unsettled period in the hands of Venture Capitalised during the early 2000s before being bought by its managing director Lee Mowle, who stepped in to save the company in 2003 when it was on the brink of failure with annual losses in excess of £1 million a year.

This innovation was demonstrated last year, when the company became the first to launch the Holy Grail of a 100 per cent biodegradable plastic flower pot. It is making a sizeable six-figure sum investment in new machinery that uses the latest moulding technology and will result in improved productivity and significant energy savings.

Only five per cent of Stewart's turnover comes from export business and, with Sterling weak against the Euro, European markets offer Stewart a real growth opportunity that the company is taking full advantage of.

Mowle added: "Despite the recession, we continue to do well and it is great that, for the first time in a long time, consumers are actively seeking out locally or British-made products rather than cheaper Far Eastern imports. It's a good time to be British and, for UK plc, it is vital that businesses like Stewart fly the British flag a bit.

"Not only has 2009 been an excellent year for us in the UK due to the reasonable weather and huge interest in 'grow your own', but our export business is also performing well. We recently appointed a new distributor for Spain and Portugal, which we believe will be a great step forward in the expansion of our business in Europe."

Mowle is convinced that, if the industry works together, it can not only ride out the economic downturn, but also expand. Stewart's gardening division has almost doubled (80% growth) its turnover in the last seven years, much of which has come from new products.

The company is confident the sector will continue to hold up well in the current economic climate, the biggest factor to influence trading being the weather over the spring and, particularly, the bank holiday weekends. The unpredictability of the British weather makes it essential for the business to manufacture close to its market to respond to demand.

Mowle also believes Stewart's success over recent years is down to having the right team of people within its 75-strong workforce. "We all share a common goal and, most importantly, work as a team to each of our individual strengths," he explained.

Source: www.gleebirmingham.com

Work gets under way on £1 million refurbishment at Papworth Hospital

WORK started this week on a £1 million refurbishment to key areas of the Chest Medical Unit of Papworth Hospital.

The work, which is expected to take around 14 weeks, focuses on the Cystic Fibrosis Unit and the Respiratory Physiology Department. In the Cystic Fibrosis Unit work will provide new ensuite facilities for each patient room.

Patients who visit the Respiratory Physiology and Thoracic Outpatient Departments will also benefit from this work with the creation of additional treatment rooms and improved facilities including additional toilets and improvement of access for wheelchairs.

Whilst this work is in progress staff are working hard to ensure that there is as little disruption as possible for patients and as many patients as possible have been informed in advance.

The work will however cause some temporary parking disruption near the Chest Unit and patients coming to the Thoracic Outpatients Department are being advised to arrive at the main hospital reception, where they will be met and escorted to the Outpatients Department.

Alison Gibson, Thoracic Directorate Manager at Papworth Hospital said: " We are delighted to be improving the facilities for our patients. We have tried hard to keep the disruption to patients to an absolute minimum but would ask patients to bear with us whilst this work is being carried out.

Source: www.cambs24.co.uk