In April 2007, a group of manufacturers joined with educators, Van Nuys Airport officials, aviation enthusiasts and others to form the San Fernando Valley Aviation/Aerospace Collaborative to stir interest in high school students to consider careers in those industries. Part of the program includes offering internships at member businesses for students in the engineering curriculum at Monroe High School. The Business Journal spoke with the representatives of some of the manufacturing companies to learn why they joined the group. Dave Rottner President C-P Manufacturing Corp. Van Nuys Having already been involved with a mentorship program at Van Nuys High School, joining the Valley collaborative was an easy fit for C-P Manufacturing. The company likes helping students of high school age, said its president Dave Rottner, who believes that the earlier a student is exposed to what manufacturing involves the better chance they have of considering it as a career. Rottner is of the generation that attended high school when industrial arts classes were common. He admits to needing a lot of help himself when he was a student. He later turned his life around. The leader of a Bible study group was also the then-owner of C-P and Rottner started at the company with little knowledge of machining. When the owner wanted to sell due to health problems, Rottner and his wife stepped in to buy the company. “I think mentoring is a big thing in kids’ lives,” Rottner said. “I strongly believe in it when kids need a direction and need help.” C-P does general machining for customers such as Cessna and Boeing. With schools eliminating shop classes, the collaborative steps in to fill the void with internship programs at its member companies. The students from Monroe not only learn about a trade but have contact with others off campus. Now, schools are beginning to realize the mistake of cutting industrial arts classes because not every student is equipped to go to college, Rottner said. The amazing thing to him is the amount of support the collaborative has received from the Valley community, be it from the companies, Monroe faculty or the offices of Los Angeles City Council members. The passion in the voices of the collaborative members at the monthly meeting shows they are interested in bettering the lives of the students and giving their time to do that, Rottner said. “Money is not the answer. It is the time and the care. Those are the things you put into these kids that will show results.” Randy Jones Vice President Xceliron Chatsworth Xceliron is one of the newest members of the collaborative. One of the main reasons the company got involved was to participate in getting the word out to high school and college students about the opportunities in manufacturing, said its vice president Randy Jones. Having students visit the company helps dispel any preconceived notions about what manufacturing is like, Jones said. There have been instances where visiting students expressed an interest in becoming engineers and then found out there are similarities with manufacturing, Jones said. Getting through to principals and counselors can be tough, though. They tend to look down at the skills needed to run a machine, not knowing that companies can spend $100,000 to $300,000 on a single piece of equipment, Jones said. “You need to have good qualified people who have basics in math,” Jones said. Like Rottner at C-P Manufacturing, Jones is also of the age when high school still had industrial arts classes. And like Rottner, he decries their being cut because it takes away exposure for the opportunities such jobs present. Having joined the collaborative, Xceliron plans to take advantage of the internship program this spring. The company has brought in student interns from Chatsworth High School and Los Angeles Valley College. What Jones likes about the collaborative is that large aerospace companies like Pratt & Whitney/Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman Corp. joined. Involvement by high-profile firms will raise awareness of the collaborative with the public, Jones said. “That is what it is going to take to recognize is a great thing,” Jones said. Steve Cormier CEO Global Aerospace Technology Corp. In taking part in the collaborative, Global Aerospace CEO Steve Cormier concedes there is a selfish reason to take part. “We are going to be in the Valley for years, and we want to have employees,” Cormier said. One of four major companies in the U.S. making cargo loading systems primarily for commercial aircraft, Global Aerospace was one of the original companies in the formation of the collaborative. It is a good business decision to ensure the availability of a qualified and trained workforce and the message the company wants to get out through the collaborative is that jobs are available, Cormier said. Last spring, the company took in six apprentices from Monroe High School for what was a positive experience. Especially appreciated was the feedback received at the end of the six-week program of the progress made by the students. The time spent at Global was not only about making cargo systems but life skills needed to find a job after high school. In having to be teachers themselves, the Global employees working with the students had to know how to do their jobs all that much better. Cormier has been involved in manufacturing for his adult career. He bought Global Aerospace in 2006 and employs 42 workers. “It is very important for the kids to understand there is something else out there that they can do,” Cormier said. Lidia Gorko Chairman and CEO Gorko Industries Inc. North Hills Manufacturing is a challenging yet rewarding career. That is the message Lidia Gorko would like students who intern at her company to walk come away with. “You can take pride in what you do because you know the parts you participate in making are going on the airplanes and they’d better be good,” Gorko said. A job shop that makes custom parts for commercial and military aircraft and some medical devices, Gorko Industries is unique among the members of the collaborative in that it is a woman-owned business in an industry dominated by men. (Airpac Enterprises is another collaborative member with a female CEO.) Gorko signed on to the collaborative after a meeting with its coordinator, Laurie Golden, sparked her interest. Like other business people taking part in the program, Gorko recognizes the need for creating interest in young people to look at manufacturing as a viable career path. Seven Monroe students interned at the company last year, and another seven will participate this spring. Some of the former interns later expressed an interest in wanting to work there, Gorko said. The best workers for her company are those with an interest and passion in aviation and making parts that go on aircraft, Gorko said. For female students, Gorko serves as an example of how far a woman can go in manufacturing, although managing a company takes skills that either gender can do equally. Gorko, however, does like to get involved in the technical aspects of the manufacturing process such as knowing how to read blueprints, visualizing how parts will be made, and estimating the cost to make them. “There has to be an interest in putting an effort into it,” Gorko said.

The FBI has started a criminal investigation into Calabasas-based Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, reported the Wall Street Journal on March 8. By March 9, other news outlets had independently confirmed an inquiry into whether Countrywide had misrepresented its financial condition. The FBI would not comment but the New York Times reported the agency was reviewing the practices of the mortgage industry, a broader investigation that included 14 companies. Countrywide is awash in federal and state investigations of, among other things, its lending practices, as well as several investor lawsuits. On March 7, Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo testified before Congress as part of a federal panel’s investigation into the compensation of corporate heads. Three financial executives testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Investigations. Drawing much scrutiny was Mozilo’s compensation. He has earned $410 million since becoming chief executive in 1999, including several stock sales made under an adjusted, automatic plan while the company was buying back shares. The New York Times reported Federal securities regulators have been scrutinizing those trades, and in a report released March 6, congressional investigators found that the use of a flawed peer group and bonus targets added to his pay. He also was offered a $37.5 million severance package, which he turned down in January, after Congress requested that he testify. Also testifying with Mozilo were Charles O. Prince III, the former chief executive of Citigroup, and E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch. More Probes On March 5, units of Countrywide and Wells Fargo were subpoenaed by the Illinois attorney general in a probe into whether the companies violated federal law by corralling non-white borrowers into more expensive loans than those offered white borrowers, Reuters reported. Other investigations had been looking at possible accounting fraud or insider trading connected to loans made to borrowers with subprime credit. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting about three dozen civil investigations into how subprime loans were made and how securities were valued, the New York Times said. A federal judge in Houston found March 5 that Countrywide did not show “bad faith” in the handling of a Texas homeowner’s mortgage and will not be sanctioned merely for unprofessional and unethical conduct, Bloomberg News Service reported. Countrywide and two law firms it used showed “a disregard for the professional and ethical obligations of the legal profession and judicial system,” the federal judge wrote. To meet the threshold for sanctions, Judge Jeff Bohm wrote, he would have had to find “clear and convincing evidence of conduct that is in bad faith, vexatious, wanton or undertaken for oppressive reasons.” In a complaint filed March 1, The United States Trustee filed a second lawsuit with the Federal Bankruptcy Court in Miami, accusing the company of abusing the bankruptcy process. A similar but separate lawsuit was filed earlier in Atlanta, Reuters reported. Countrywide is in the process of being acquired by Bank of America for about $4 billion, which does not include the $2 million bailout offered last August in exchange for about one-sixth of the lender. Under the merger agreement, Countrywide shareholders would receive 0.1822 of a Bank of America share for each of their shares. Calabasas-based Countrywise reported a loss of about $422 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. — James Hames

When Gibbs and Associates appear later this month at the Westec manufacturing trade show it will be the company’s first public appearance since a merger with Cimatron Limited. It should make for an interesting time, said Bill Gibbs, president and CEO of the Moorpark-based maker of software used in the production manufacturing market. The company has weathered the reaction of the employees and its re-sellers but nobody else. “We haven’t sat down in front of the world yet and said, “We’re part of a bigger company now,'” Gibbs said. In January, Gibbs merged into the U.S. subsidiary of Cimatron Limited, a software company for the mold and die design market. Gibbs is among the dozen companies from the Valley region with a booth at Westec, taking place March 31 to April 3 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The annual show provides a forum for companies around the U.S. to showcase their equipment and announce new services or products. Gibbs, for instance, will introduce an updated version of its GibbsCAM software. This year, the trade show introduces its “back to basics” workforce development program aimed at steering high school and college students into high-paying engineering and technical careers. It is challenging for companies to find qualified workers, not necessarily for the high-tech positions but at the entry level, such as measurement skills and basic machinery operations, said Gary Mikola, director of events for the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Booths on the show floor will give attendees the opportunity to talk with career counselors, learn about certified training programs and find out about industry pay scales, Mikola said. “For employers, it will give them a chance to see what training is available,” Mikola said. Attracting qualified workers will also be among the topics to be addressed at the 2008 Manufacturing & Distribution Forum taking place on March 19. The forum is presented by the Valley Industry & Commerce Association and Los Angeles City Councilman Greig Smith. (The Business Journal is a co-sponsor of the event). The half-day conference is a response to the needs of manufacturers as communicated by VICA members, said President Brendan Huffman. Smith chairs the city council’s new Jobs, Business Growth & Tax Reform Committee and has led a business council in his district for years. He is committed to preserving the northeast Valley industrial area as one for jobs and industry, Smith said. “This manufacturing forum is a great example of how we can use public/private partnerships to bring resources to assist the manufacturers in the San Fernando Valley and help them stay competitive,” Smith said. The forum includes a legislative update on energy, environment and other policy issues; and panel discussions on winning the workforce battle, and the finance and M & A; climate. Keynote speakers are Tom Murphy, executive vice president of manufacturing and wholesale distribution for professional services firm RSM McGladrey, and Jack Stewart, president of the California Manufacturers & Technology Association.

Tower General Contractors of Sun Valley has already built a reputation. Now, they’re building a museum. The Columbia Memorial Space Science Learning Center will be an educational museum focusing on 90 years of aviation history, focusing on the work that happened on-site. The Downey location was previously among other things, a Boeing and Rockwell facility and was used by NASA for manufacturing engines for the space shuttles and the Apollo capsules. It was closed in 1999. After building many hospitals and health care facilities, Tower is now building an 18,000-square-foot, two story, ground-up building with an aluminum skin meant to evoke a spaceship. The interior should represent the vastness of space, said Alex Guerrero, Tower’s executive vice president. The project broke ground not quite a year ago and is expected to be complete by September. With the steel superstructure completed and rough plumbing done, the final building will begin to take shape. “We’ll be open in time for the new school year,” Guerrero said. “The goal is to everyday have a line of buses full of kids visiting the museum,” with its interactive exhibits and the original Apollo capsule. There isn’t room for the city’s full-sized mockup of the shuttle orbiter built for training by Rockwell out of steel and plywood. Scott Pomrehn, assistant to the Downey city manager, is thrilled that Tower is working on the project. Nato Flores, Tower’s president, worked for a summer at Rockwell where he became eligible for and earned a scholarship. “That Flores is coming back to the site to build this, it just completes the story,” Pomrehn said. The project’s components, Pomrehn said, from the exterior covering to the detailed lighting plan, are all state-of-the-art. So there are bound to be surprises, he said. “We’ll be using Tower’s expertise in working through some of these issues, asking ‘does this make sense for a museum?’ and ‘Where’s the plug going to be?'” Pomrehn said. The city is considering the idea of a second phase, to add an auditorium perhaps, and certainly to provide a home for the full-sized shuttle mock-up, Pomrehn said. Downey would like to continue its relationship with the builder, Pomrehn said. After 9/11 the company was determined to get more involved in civic projects. Guerrero said. That effort redoubled after the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart during reentry in 2003. By the time a Congressional resolution approving a museum was passed, Tower had moved into high gear. They pursued the job actively, responding to the City’s request for proposals. “Everyone was vested in this,” Guerrero said. After they were awarded the contract, Tower’s work began in earnest two years ago. As the construction contractors, their job is to interpret drawings, oversee the schedule and quality work, keep tabs on the budget, and mediate and mitigate any problems. “Every project has issues. Our job is to manage those issues,” Guerrero said. One issue was rain. “When you’re building a ground-up building, you’re digging a big hole,” Guerrero said. “With the rain, it becomes a big swimming pool.” This winter’s weather could have caused 20 days of delay, he said, and that meant juggling the schedule. A delay of one task doesn’t necessarily mean all tasks are delayed, he said. Tower’s job is to move tasks around to keep people working. A high-profile project such as the museum means additional scrutiny. “It’s on everybody’s radar,” Guerrero said, citing the attention given already by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard. The latter authored the Congressional resolution giving the project a federal blessing and also its name. “But we’re just doing what we’re doing anyways,” Guerrero said. The ability to juggle and bear scrutiny served them well on past projects such as the emergency department at Cedars Sinai Hospital. At 28,000 square feet it’s the largest in the country, Guerrero said. Sun Valley-based Tower made its name for itself as a health care general contractor. Then when hospitals began experiencing a financial crunch, Tower refocused its aim to include work with defense contractors. They have continued to branch out. The company has worked with UCLA, utility companies and is building eight Union Bank branches. They’re also moving a chemical plant from Michigan to California, building a fire station on Catalina Island (where all the water they need for construction has to be brought from the mainland) and remodeling the Beverly Hills City Hall, Guerrero said. That landmark was built in 1932, and among the issues to manage is matching surface finishes that don’t exist anymore and woods that are now extinct, and keeping the integrity of terrazzo floors. The company is expanding on the other work they’ve already done at St. John of God retirement and care center, a health center for the aged that offers progressive stages of care from moderately independent to managed care. They are in the process of building a 36,000 square foot Alzheimer’s clinic at the site. The company’s focus on the community extends beyond the hospitals, care centers, fire stations and museum it builds. They are building college graduates as well. Beginning in the fall of 2009, Guerrero said, the company will sponsor a college freshman through four years of school, paying for room and books. In the summer, they will also give the student a job. Additionally, Tower will help to underwrite a fund for teachers to draw upon for supplies. Cal Poly Pomona is the focus of Tower’s affections because company president Flores is an alumnus. Flores founded Tower in 1985. It is now the largest minority-owned general contractor in Los Angeles County. Tower was named Fastest Growing Private Company of 2007 by the San Fernando Valley Business Journal in the $25 million to $99.9 million category and was also ranked the fifth Fastest Growing Private Company in L.A. County by the Los Angeles Business Journal, by virtue of its revenue increasing 87% from 2005 to 2006.

From genocide in Darfur, to iPods, to squirrel habitat, to a trend toward white automobiles … a lot of things impact the art material retail industry in ways that are clear to Steve Aufhauser, the owner of Continental Art Supplies in Reseda. Gum arabic, a binding agent in water-soluble paints, comes only from a narrow but continent-wide stripe of sub-Saharan Africa that roughly includes Sudan and Somalia where conflicts over the years made the material hard to come by. “War is not good for many things including art,” Aufhauser said. “But we have sold our fair share of picket signs,” he said, joking. Then there is the business impact of consumer trends in car colors. “Color in this world how it’s mined, refined, made available to the consumer, the consumer being paint manufacturers is entirely and absolutely driven by the automotive trade,” Aufhauser said. “The providers do what they do based on demand for their product. If all of a sudden we’re not buying brown cars anymore, then they stop making the plethora of pigments for browns,” he said, “and that can drive the price and availability of the product.” In addition to the climate effects on crops like the ’80s drought in the South that tore into cotton yields and thus rag-content paper supplies, climate affects the content of fine paintbrushes also. “The best sable brushes can be very specific,” he said. “It comes from a male animal living out in the wild trapped after a lousy winter because their coats are fuller.” Conversely, art materials can have an impact upon events. Aufhauser recounts circumstances around his address at the last convention of the National Art Materials Trade Association, where he is a past president. The convention occurred just after the massacre at Virginia Tech where 33 people died. He was given an ovation when he wondered if perhaps the killer “had gotten an art box instead of an Xbox, that may not have happened,” he said. Not that he blames video games for the shootings, but he does say they’re bad for business. “Technology is our competition. Kids aren’t drawing and painting, making comic books and making their own stories,” using their own creativity, Aufhauser said. “With video games they are playing in other people’s stories,” engaged in someone else’s creativity. He also notes how he is in competition for people’s finite supply of expendable income. “It’s a choice of an iPod or art supplies … or art lessons,” Aufhauser said, speaking generally: “No one thinks to take art classes because they aren’t being offered.” It’s systemic, he said. “Society isn’t making more customers … no one even thinks about the arts except those people who are already into it.” “We ignore every study that’s ever been published about how children excel in other areas of education and social skills by developing artistic methods,” Aufhauser said, citing “music, dance or visual arts, theater arts … it doesn’t really matter which.” Arts, he said, create “better spatial relations, better human relations, better coordination skills, better study skills, problem solving and we ignore that.” Aufhauser, noting the dearth of art impacts, wonders where our society and culture is going to be in 25 years or five years time, stressing that it “certainly has effects on the art materials industry today.” As a means to provide a place for more art to be created, Aufhauser has recently rearranged his regularly rearranged store (“My whole store is an end-cap”) to open up space for classes where books and work tables were previously displayed. “People got ideas from art books but didn’t necessarily buy art books. We really scaled down, but in reality we probably still have the largest section in the Valley for art books,” Aufhauser said. The new workshop area in the rear of the store meets a need for the arts community, he said. “It’s a place rented and used to take classes or give classes, not a school,” he said, filling a gap left from when “there were places like Everywoman’s Village and Learning Tree that are gone.” The community of artists that Continental is tapping into, is one that it has nurtured philanthropically. Spike Ward of the Arts in Education Aid Council, a non-profit that gets art materials into the hands of school teachers, cites the gift certificates Aufhauser donates for raffles, the art show he’s sponsored for art teachers, and the “shopping” day of free supplies for art teachers. “He’s a good family man and good for the community,” Ward said. Plus he donates all his freight-damaged product which the AEAC funnels into Valley schools, Ward said, and “he donated to us a copier and a desk. Now I have a desk.” He also donates prizes to juried exhibits of various arts organizations and art leagues “recognizing accomplishments of artists exhibiting more or less based in the Valley,” Aufhauser said. “It’s important to give back something. Visual arts is something you do on your own, not like ballet which you do with a handful of people,” he said. “We want them recognized beyond the art that hangs on wall. We sincerely care about them.” That feeling of care was returned last year. At one of those art league exhibits for which Continental Art Supply provided a prize to a winning artist, many heard of Aufhauser’s heart attack for the first time. During the reception for the Valley Artists Guild’s fall exhibit, between announcements for awards, the emcee told the crowd of Aufhauser’s coronary. “Pray for him,” she said, “to stop smoking.” Lessons learned: Aufhauser has stopped smoking and dropped a lot of weight from going to the gym five days a week. And there were business lessons to learn as well. “My heart attack made me realize how well-trained my staff is,” he said, “They stepped up to the challenge of running the business in my absence.” That staff is the key to the Continental Art Supplies appeal, Aufhauser said. “People see we bring our knowledge and experience and a certain amount of joy.” And they create joy, he said. “We create for some people a euphoria they find perhaps few other places. It sounds lofty, but there are definitely people who walk in here and the skies part and angels sing,” Aufhauser said, tongue only half in cheek. “People ask if there’s any magic to your success. I don’t know how successful we’ve been, but there’s certainly magic here,” he said. “I get notes and letters in the mail saying we’re an awesome store. Go onto Yelp.com, people say amazing things about us,” said Aufhauser. For example, the public comment site includes this: “They have an entire floor just for paper. I think that says it all. Worth the drive to the Valley, as nothing in Los Angeles comes close.” Victoria S. from L.A. The store’s regulars know to expect something to be moved from where they used to find it. It’s part of the plan. “Shift something six inches to the right, something you haven’t sold in months, and all of a sudden you start selling,” he said, “It’s the strangest thing.” “People do come here to browse,” Aufhauser said, and “find new things and discuss new things.” Moving things around is not so 21st Century like so-called “e-tailing,” but Aufhauser isn’t convinced the Internet is a good way to sell his product. “We don’t sell on the Internet,” he said, simply because online “you can’t touch paper; you can’t see true color; you can’t feel a brush.” Art materials are the result, Aufhauser said, “of the culture of fabrication that has developed over hundreds of years. You need to see it, feel it and sometimes smell it. Sometimes you have to hear it, a subtlety in how a brush is made. Flick the bristles near your ear and notice ‘this one’s a little different.’ That can make a difference.” Aufhauser’s business model customers interacting with knowledgeable people and the products they sell is something that doesn’t go digital. Appealing to the customer he can see has been the plan since 1960. “I’m much more comfortable moving stuff around than changing our business model. Our business model is to have everything that anyone could possible ever need and have staff that knows everything there is to know about that product and to treat people with respect and kindness and civility,” Aufhauser said. “That’s the way Dad started things almost 50 years ago.” Good retailing remains vital in the bricks and mortar world, he said. “The definition of a good store is dependent upon the products that they carry and the knowledge they carry about the products they carry. That pretty much defines good retailing, universally.” Continental Art Supplies Location: Reseda Revenues in 2006: $2 million Revenue in 2007: $2 million Employees in 2006: 18 Employees in 2007: 13 Year Established: 1960

Joe Maddalena makes his living selling memories. Not the universal memories of birthdays, graduations or weddings but those evoked by props or costumes from a favorite television series or movie. Does the blue overcoat worn by Julie Andrews in “Mary Poppins” cause a flashback of a bygone Saturday matinee? Maddelena has it. How about a rattan chair used in “Casablanca” or original scripts to the “Dr. No” and “Goldfinger?” Ditto. “People, I find, really want to be surrounded by things that make them happy,” said Maddalena, who operates high-end auction house Profiles in History in Calabasas. Of course, purchasing these memories comes at a price that proves lucrative for Maddalena and other dealers of Hollywood memorabilia and collectibles. So much so that even the major studios from time to time have auctioned off clothing and props themselves, with a part of the proceeds often going to charity. Profiles’ next auction taking place later this month is expected to reap $4 million from the 1,100 items up for sale. In past years, Profiles in History has brought in double-digit revenues. <!– Hollywood: Selling history and memories. –> Hollywood: Selling history and memories. After so many years brokering sales of Hollywood memorabilia, Maddelena is at the point where he is expected to have the high-end items. Type in “Hollywood memorabilia auctions” into the Google or Yahoo! search engines and chances are Profiles in History will come up at the top of the results. Sotheby’s and Christie’s have far greater worldwide reputations yet are not usually called when an owner wants to auction elaborate science fiction props designed by Stan Winston or when a private collector wants to cash in the first Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award given out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Maddalena has done a great job in carving out his own niche, said David Jackson, of Back Lot Props in Northridge, who once outbid Maddalena for a Han Solo blaster from “Star Wars.” The main focus of Back Lot Props is in purchasing complete sets, costumes and props from the major studios that are then rented out. Jackson does operate a small memorabilia division with items offered on eBay and has plans for a retail store. Back Lot found its niche in acquiring entire productions just as the high-end, one-of-a-kind item has been claimed by Profiles in History. “We buy a complete production so that it allows everybody to find something they could afford, whereas some of Joe’s things tend to be on the elite side,” Jackson said. Being located in Los Angeles has the advantage of making it easier for entertainment industry professionals to use Profiles in History as a third-party seller, said Jason De Bord, a memorabilia collector and writer for the website OriginalPropBlog.com who has sold a couple of items through Profile in History. Private collectors in other part of the country have other options, like Florida real estate developer Anthony Pugliese who sold his pop culture collection through Guernsey’s in a Las Vegas auction on March 15 and 16. “It will be interesting to see if the market can absorb so many high end pieces because it is still a small hobby and the items are very expensive,” De Bord said. “I don’t think we’ve had two big events like this in one month where there is so much stuff going back into the marketplace.” Business or Hobby? Whether dealing in Hollywood memorabilia is a business or a hobby depends on which side of the equation one stands. De Bord buys, only occasionally selling a rare item in order to fund another purchase, so it’s less of a business. Maddalena sells, so he never refers to it as a hobby. As a teenager whose parents were antique dealers, Maddalena saw the potential in the commercial side of selling nostalgia. While a student at Pepperdine University he scoured Hollywood shops for rare and collectable books for sale on the East Coast. In those pre-Internet days, he assembled a catalogue that went to a group of friends. When the number of buyers snowballed, a career opportunity presented itself. Maddalena started Profiles in History in 1985 and was located in Beverly Hills for two decades before relocating to Calabasas a year ago. The firm still uses catalogues for the auctions taking place three to four times a year. The Internet allows a global reach for the items it offers. The online approach is how NBC Universal makes available props and clothing worn in its television series. The network began its auctions in December and this month offered items from “Law and Order,” “Heroes,” and “Friday Night Lights.” Fifteen percent of the proceeds from the sales went to the United Way. Making these items available was a response from fans of the shows, said Stacey Ward, director of NBC Universal Television DVD, Music and Consumer Products Group. “They have such an attachment to it that it gives us another way to interact with the fans,” Ward said. “It gives the viewers and fans a feeling they are part of the show.” Preserving History It’s not all about nostalgia or emotional attachment. Only about half of Maddalena’s business deals with Hollywood the other half of his business is focused on historical documents and autographs. Sometimes, though, the two sides meet. An item such as the first of three Thalberg Award statuettes given to Darryl Zanuck in 1937, included in this month’s auction, has more history attached to it than a background prop. The award is not given every year and recognizes an industry figure for their body of work and contributions to Hollywood. Maddalena has valued the award at $150,000 but admits it is hard to gauge the real value because this will be the first time the award has ever been sold. This is a different kind of purchase with a different kind of buyer. Nostalgia, Maddalena said, goes out the window. “This will go to a more sophisticated buyer who understands the (historical) significance,” Maddalena said. Staff Reporter Mark Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or by e-mail at [email protected] .

The higher prices of its second and third generation laser products contributed to QPC Lasers Inc. narrowing its net loss for the fourth quarter when compared with the previous year. The Sylmar-based manufacturer launched its third generation product in 2007 and shipped initial orders. The new technology offers up to a ten fold improvement in efficiency, cost, size, weight and ruggedness compared to today’s conventional laser technology. “Demand for our core Gen I and Gen II product families continues to accelerate, particularly for medical laser products,” said company Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Ungar. “In fact, we have now shipped nearly 3,500 varicose vein removal lasers, which we feel is a noteworthy validation not only for growing customer demand for our products, but for the quality and reliability of our products.” For the fourth quarter, QPC reported a net loss of $1 million, or $0.03 per diluted share, on revenues of $2.8 million. For the same period in 2006, QPC had a net loss of $2.7 million, or a loss of $0.09 per diluted share, on revenues of $1.3 million. For the 2007 fiscal year, QPC reported a net loss of $9.7 million, or a loss of $0.25 per diluted share, on revenues of $7.9 million. In 2006, the company had a net loss of $18.7 million, or a loss of $0.60 per diluted share, on revenues of $3.1 million.

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Lined up in a straight row, the inch-long fasteners get stamped with orange paint on their business end and then tumble down a white plastic pipe into a metal tray. There are thousands of these coming from these machines, and that adds into the millions of fasteners that are coated on a daily basis at the Chatsworth plant of E/M Coating Services. A quick scan of the shipping area reveals those parts don’t stay around very long. “You don’t see a lot of stuff piling up,” said Michael Steinberg, the division manager for the Chatsworth plant as well as another in North Hollywood. Speed is of the essence when supplying aerospace manufacturers. Aircraft cannot be assembled if the parts holding the plane together are sitting in a box hundreds of miles away. Quick turnaround and the quality of its custom work are the hallmarks of E/M, a formerly private company located in the San Fernando Valley since the late 1940s and now a division of a subsidiary of publicly-traded Curtiss-Wright Corp. Long-range plans call for consolidating the two Valley plants into a single location, preferably somewhere between Chatsworth and North Hollywood, for the convenience of its 140-member workforce. As E/M is not in the real estate business, the company prefers to lease an existing building or have a developer build a new structure that it can lease, Steinberg said. As division manager, Steinberg focuses on strategic planning; creating the right plan that anticipates the types of materials of its client’s parts and the use of those parts on the finished product. Curtiss-Wright is the largest provider of solid film lubricant coatings in the world, and the two Valley plants are among the seven it operates in the U.S. The market base gets divided between aircraft, automotive and general industrial uses, with a small percentage going to the defense industry. Coating protects parts from corrosion, harsh temperatures, chemical environments, and heavy loads. Then there are the rare times when a coating is applied to, well, just look nice. “There is sometimes a cosmetic portion of what we do,” Steinberg said. When parts such as fasteners arrive at E/M they are immersed into liquid that takes the finish from shiny to dull to get the proper adhesion on the surface so the coating will stay. Both automated equipment and manual sprayers are used to apply the coatings developed and manufactured by E/M. With automated equipment tumbling the parts in a large bin, one worker can supervise three machines doing multiple orders. While more automation is in use it will never fully replace an employee spraying the coating on because of the custom work done by the company, Steinberg said. Out back at the Chatsworth plant is a furnace with flames reaching 1,400 degrees that destroys 98 percent of the fumes created by the solvents and other chemicals used in the coating process. The E/M touch is in such demand that in late February Steinberg added a third shift of 20 workers at the Chatsworth plant. The planning process to add the extra shift took about a year, with Steinberg assuring the orders were coming to justify adding workers. Then the facility was made ready with the necessary equipment. Third shifts are a popular choice and very cost effective way to grow a business, said Bruce Ackerman, president and CEO of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley. “You don’t add capital or equipment you can maximize what you have,” Ackerman said. Staying Lean A native of Florida, Steinberg spent 13 years in the Chicago area before becoming division manager in the Valley four years ago. In that time, he has brought the concepts of lean manufacturing to both plants to make them competitive and ensure long term success. Going lean, Steinberg said, is a way of life. It applies not only to the coating process but the paperwork involved, and the shipping of the finished product. Operators spray parts and do their own quality control while quality inspectors spot check the work and do value-added processing. Lean is all about the culture of a company, a way to improve rather than stay complacent, said Alex Federici, a consultant with California Manufacturing Technology Consultants who has worked with Steinberg and others at E/M. “If you start thinking that way someone else is going to come along and find a better way,” Federici said. The best measurement of how well lean manufacturing is working is in the time it takes to get through the process of receiving parts, coating them and shipping them out. The company can work on 200 to 300 orders simultaneously and have them out the door in 24 hours to 36 hours, Steinberg said. “I work with a lot of machine shops, a lot of [other companies] that go out for similar type work and I have not seen any other company hitting the kind of turnaround times that E/M is,” Federici said. Overseas Addition Another project taking Steinberg’s time is a new E/M facility in China, outside of Shanghai, expected to open by the end of the year. The news of an overseas plant is reason enough to send shudders through any company but this is not an instance of E/M outsourcing work overseas. Instead, the company is meeting the demands for coating parts from Asian companies and U.S. companies receiving parts from overseas. The China plant has been in the planning stages for about 18 months. To better prepare himself for doing work there, Steinberg set about educating himself on cultural differences learning how to conduct himself in a business meeting and the appropriate seating of arrangements for a banquet with Chinese officials. The long flights have given Steinberg time to pick up a few words of Chinese to use with his hosts. “My goal is to learn three or four new words for each visit,” Steinberg said.

It’s not just a palm garden, it’s an exhibit. The approximately 100 palms installed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, specifically along the promenade by the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum, are a more like a grouping of paintings you might see inside one of the museum buildings along Wilshire Boulevard. That was the vision executed by landscape architect Paul Comstock of ValleyCrest in Calabasas. Some palms are in the ground but most are in large wooden above ground, boxes. “We tried to create a museum collection of palm trees much like visiting a Picasso art show,” Comstock said, “not to replicate a long-range environment.” Some are there for the short term. About 40 will be rotated out those onsite now are the winter collection and around early May, the summer collection will be “hung.” One showpiece tree, a Chilean wine palm that Comstock said is an “old soul,” has come a long way and lived a long time and is in a subterranean planter box. “In 1882, some of these palm seeds were brought in from the Andes. This tree is 120 years old and is from among the first seeds ever brought into America. These have been tracked at Lotusland Nursery in Montecito,” he said. It’s called a wine palm because in its homeland people would whack off the palm’s crown, fell the tree, a jelly sap would come out and they’d distill that. “It has a mildly alcoholic content to it,” Comstock said. “Seed is rare. They whacked them all in the wild to get drunk. Some of the best ones and some of the oldest ones,” he said, are in Southern California because people collected seeds over a century ago when there were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of specimens in the wild. The landscape architect is the managing partner of Comstock Studio, part of the ValleyCrest Design Group, underneath the ValleyCrest Companies banner. Also at the BCAM installation, there is an adolescent wine palm aged 25, and two young adults aged 50. The “old soul” is planted two floors below street level, erupting out of the parking garage where it sits in a sort of five-foot-deep bathtub of soil mixture, where the water level is regulated. “Only about 60 years worth” is growing above the street-level courtyard, Comstock said. Palms came to be representative of the project, for a few reasons. On a deeper level, they are representative of some of the earliest plant forms on the planet, and one of the first that humans would have made use of; to eat the fruit, drink the sap and use for shelter. That, Comstock said, ties in with the archeological, geological location the proximity to the Tar Pits and the George Page Museum with its excavations into prehistoric periods. Comstock said, “The big umbrella idea was not a parking structure that ignores this environment, but something that celebrates the place.” Basically, he said, working off of “that kind of primordial soup idea.” The architect, Renzo Piano, had an idea of a matrix, or a fabric, of palms as an over-story that would tie a bunch of the areas together. Garden designer Robert Irwin was working with that concept and then he got more and more interested in the subtleties, Comstock said. Of those subtle distinctions, palms basically have round trunks, except, Comstock said, “There is the triangle palm (neodypsis decaryi); the trunk itself is 3-sided.” He said that Irwin treated the species “in an almost a sculptural kind of way.” Some of the plants in the exhibit aren’t palms in the literal sense, but are included for their palm-like qualities such as a variety of banana plant cultivated for its colorful foliage, and American native bottle palms and sago palms which help to sustain the primordial leitmotif, being from among the oldest plant species surviving, some going back 250 million years, Comstock said. Initially, Comstock said the plan when he came on board was only for palms of three different heights. Then Comstock’s experience from plant expeditions (“I call myself a wandering tree gypsy,” he said) through 73 different countries over the last 20 years became vital in finding unique and different specimens, “They just kind of turned me loose,” said Comstock, whose stock phrase is, “I know where to get that.” The intention, he said, is to try and have a runway modeling show of the range and variety of palms, with the fan palm and the feather palm describing the two leaf shapes, and a third as a transitional species which more or less bridges the two. But initially, that was not the plan. Things changed pretty rapidly said Bart Shively, the on-site project executive for Matt Construction, the general contractor. He characterized the task as “an odd job.” “It’s a completely different palette than when it began,” Shively said. “The only way this worked, what with the design entity who would come along and shake the Etch-A-Sketch,” was because the design-build orientation of ValleyCrest, which was able to keep the “budgets almost concurrent with the changes.” It could be infuriating and taxing for those dealing with the changes, Shively said, but it’s streamlined because it’s all in-house. Comstock gave an example: “With the classic arrangement which has a separation of the owner, the designer, the landscape contractor and the general contractor it would be very difficult in the 11th hour to accommodate surprises like ‘I just drove by this tree in San Diego. I think we should put that down near the end.’ It was never on a plan. In a normal situation, first the designer would say ‘That’s going to be an extra charge to change the plan.’ Then somebody draws it up, then it’s submitted to the contractor for pricing, then we would need to make sure that’s good with the owner It could never happen.” Now, that palm is in an 84-inch box at the eastern end of the primary installation. Comstock said that the design-build aspect of ValleyCrest’s structure provided the flexibility of dealing with Irwin, the designer of the gardens at the Getty Center, which was also installed by ValleyCrest. “We have a creative entity in force. He is fluid, a living breathing artist. He’s interested in something today, but tomorrow maybe it’s something else,” Comstock said. “The flexibility in the entire process from birthing to opening day in design-build is an incredible positive element of the integration of all the aspects,” he said. “…(It) is a shining example of how a harmonious combination with the design-build aspect breaks down barriers and allows a single interaction underneath the same umbrella.” Likewise, it will be easier for Comstock to do some fine tuning. For instance, some mammoth Canary Island palms aren’t exactly vertical. “I’ll be able to tilt those before they’ve anchored themselves in,” he said, as if it is the final touch. Clearly, he’s pleased with how the project’s coming. He’s not alone. Imitating Piano’s Italian accent, Comstock quotes the Pritzker Architecture Prize winner: “The palms make my stone look so good and the stone makes the palms look good. It’s like a marriage.” But not everyone is so enthusiastic. Comstock said, “Someone came up to me and said ‘I just don’t get it.’ Well, in a lot of ways the object isn’t ‘to get it,’ to get anything in particular, but to kind of see the different characteristics that they have” which gave him the opportunity to wax eloquent about the unique design of a palm trunk, the interlocked pattern of the stub ends of fronds sheared long ago. “Ma nature is the best, can’t beat her,” Comstock said.