Electronics components and aerospace engine manufacturer Teledyne Technologies Inc. finished its fiscal year with a 22 percent increase in net profits. The Thousand Oaks-based company reported net income of $98.5 million, or $2.72 per diluted share, on revenues of $1,622 million for the 2007 fiscal year. For the previous year, the company had a net income of $80.3 million, or $2.26 per diluted share, on revenues of $1,433 million. The company has been on a buying spree of late with subsidiaries acquiring firms with complementary services. In January, Teledyne Reynolds Inc. bought out Storm Products Co., a maker of microwave components and defense interconnect products. In December, Teledyne Scientific & Imaging LLC acquired Judson Technologies, a manufacturer of infrared detectors; while Teledyne Instruments Inc. purchased Impulse Enterprise, manufacturer of underwater electrical interconnection systems.

Tri-anim has paired up with Parker Medical to sell and distribute Parker’s tracheal tubes and associated products. Sylmar-based Tri-anim will distribute the full line of Parker’s Flex-Tip Tracheal Tubes, designed, in part, to prevent damage to the patient’s airway anatomy. Tri-anim will also sell the Parker Flex-It & #153; Intubating Stylet, designed to remotely curve the tracheal tube during intubations. Parker’s products enable anesthesiologists, CRNAs, emergency and critical care physicians, paramedics and EMTs to meet the challenge of quickly intubating even the most difficult airways in a manner that minimizes trauma to the patient, according to the company. This year, Parker has plans to launch a slew of new products.

San Fernando Valley accountant Mel Kohn was elected as the new chairman of the board of directors of FilmLA, the not for profit agency that coordinates the permitting process for on-location filming. Kohn is the first non-entertainment industry professional elected to chair the board. He is managing partner of Kirsch, Kohn & Bridge, in Encino. Kohn joined the board in 2005 after serving on the financial audit sub-committee. “Mel brings more than 30 years of senior-level business and management experience, as well as in-depth knowledge of our communities developed by years of civic involvement,” said FilmLA President Steve MacDonald. “In addition, the fact that his experience lies primarily outside the film production industry has helped provide a more balanced perspective to the board.” The 25-members board is made up of representatives of major studios, independent production companies, entertainment industry unions and guilds, local neighborhoods and production-related vendors.

The selling of $15.5 million in shares to three investment firms allows North American Scientific Inc. to continue development of a breast cancer treatment device. Three Arch Partners led the purchase with a $10 million purchase. CHL Medical Partners invested $3 million and SF Capital Partners invested $2.5 million. The money will be used for continual development of ClearPath, the company’s breast cancer treatment using internal radiation therapy, and for working capital. North American developed a similar radiation therapy for patients with prostrate cancer. The company looks forward to the success of the ClearPath product and for continued sales growth in 2008, said President and CEO John B. Rush.

Video game publisher THQ Inc. expects a nearly 17 percent decrease in sales for the fourth quarter due to one cancelled game title and lowered expectations for several other games. Agoura Hills-based THQ expects sales in the fourth quarter ending March 31 to be $200 million. The previous forecast had been for sales of $240 million. THQ cancelled its March release of “Destroy All Humans: Big Willy Unleashed” for the PlayStation 2. The revised sales figure also takes in lower than expected sales of several other titles released in early 2007. The company also announced the closing of its Concrete Games studio in Carlsbad. A substantial number of employees will be offered positions in other studios. The closure will be reflected in the fourth quarter financial results.

Officials from the Writers Guild of America and the major Hollywood studios have met to discuss returning to negotiations for a new contract and an end to the 3-month television and film writers strike. Additionally, the Guild leadership has dropped demands that writers for animated programming and reality shows be represented by the Guild, the Los Angeles Times reported. Guild members began their walkout Nov. 5 after talks failed to produce a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The main sticking point is payment of work distributed through new media. The strike has cost the economy hundreds of millions of dollars, production jobs and jeopardizes the Academy Awards in late February. The Alliance and the Directors Guild of America reached a tentative contract Jan. 17 that includes provisions for payment of work distributed through online downloads and streaming and on mobile devices.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has filed a lawsuit against seven of the nation’s largest restaurant chains operating in California, according to the Nation’s Restaurant News. Washington, D.C.-based PCRM asserts that the operators failed to warn customers about the potential for consuming the carcinogen PhIP, which can occur when chicken is cooked at high temperatures, NRN reported. The chemical is among those listed under California’s Proposition 65, which requires businesses to warn the public about possible exposure to toxins that can cause cancer or reproductive harm, according to NRN. The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court Jan. 17 and targets Applebee’s International, which is owned by Glendale-based IHOP Inc., as well as McDonald’s Corp; Burger King Corp.; Carlson Restaurants Worldwide Inc.; Chick-fil-A; Brinker International; and OSI Restaurant Partners. A similar lawsuit filed in 2006 by PCRM was dismissed.

The Ventura County Economic Development Association had its 59th annual installation ceremony Jan. 17 at the Spanish Hills Country Club in Camarillo. VCEDA advocates for policies, legislation and programs that stimulate business in Ventura County, a portion of which extends into the Valley. During the meeting, it was announced that Michael Salacci of AT & T; will be incoming chair. Salacci replaces outgoing chair Howard J. Smith of Morgan Stanley. Asked what the group has in store for the year, VCEDA President and CEO Bill Barado said, among other things, that they are in the process of planning their 38th annual outlook business conference, to take place in October. “This year, our primary priorities are going to revolve around our continued advocacy for the Ventura County business community at the local, federal and state level,” Barado said. “Major advocacy issues are going to be the state budget, health care and water.” In light of budgetary concerns, Vickie Bradshaw, California Labor and Workforce Development Agency secretary, addressed the estimated 200-plus businesses in attendance at the conference. “I thought it would be interesting to have someone from the Governor’s office speak to what the major issues facing California are,” Barado said. Bradshaw said that the budget is the major issue at hand. “The governor really is proposing a budget stabilization act that is meant to keep the state from going though these major ups and downs. Right now, we don’t have a revenue problem. We have a problem with our budgeting system in that 90 percent of our spending is on autopilot,” Bradshaw told the Business Journal. “It continues to go up, no matter what happens because of either contractual obligations or statutory obligations. So, the Governor’s budget stabilization act is meant to correct the problem. It’s meant to bring our spending in line with our revenues.” As a result, the Governor has required all state governments to take a ten percent across the board cut, Bradshaw said. She believes that if the budget stabilization act had been in effect in 1998, California would not have the budgetary problems it does now. While California’s economy may be in peril, Bradshaw said that the numbers indicate that Ventura County is doing better than the state as a whole. “If you look at the different unemployment numbers between 2006 and 2007, Ventura County was 4.3 percent in 2006. As of November of 2007, it was up to 5.4 percent.” On the other hand, California as a whole had an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent in 2006 that rose to 5.6 by the end of 2007. The per capita income of households in Ventura County is also higher than California households as a whole. The average income of a Ventura County household is $43,350. Compare that to the average for a California household, which is $36,936. “Ventura County, both in terms of unemployment as well as per capita income, is doing better than California,” Bradshaw said. She attributes this to the kinds of industries found in Ventura County. Chemical manufacturing, crop production and electrical equipment application and component manufacturers are the top industries there, according to Bradshaw. “It’s a diversified group of industry sub-sectors that are considered cutting edge. It’s what makes Ventura County unique,” she said. Now, all the County has to do is make sure that it produces a workforce prepared to meet the growth in those areas, Bradshaw said. This can be done by getting K-12 schools and colleges to work in sync to produce students qualified to work in the area’s top industries. Forming such an alliance is crucial, Bradshaw feels. “If businesses don’t find a qualified workforce, they relocate someplace else,” she said.

Make no mistake Creative Invitations and Balloons is no Party City. It’s not that the Woodland Hills business has anything against the chain. They actually refer customers there. It’s that, unlike Party City, they concentrate on customizing balloons and discount invitations. “Anyone can do balloons,” co-owner Mark Marfiak explained. “We specialize in decorating.” Added partner Patti Knowles, “We have personalized service. Everything is done custom.” Knowles has designed multi-layered invitations in the shape of butterflies. Marfiak has been approached by medical professionals about shaping a balloon as a hypodermic needle, a request he ultimately didn’t fill. Shortly after the New Year, though, Marfiak managed to supply 1,000 balloons in just over three hours for a client. To boot, Creative features musical balloons and balloon bouquets, all armed with a substance called “high float” to ward off deflation. That way, “The balloons are not on the floor in the morning,” Knowles said. As for the non-balloon items, “We can really make anything,” she continued. “We go all the way from doing the invitations to doing the envelopes.” Custom handmade cards, picture frames, leis, lunchboxes, napkins and towels with special imprints can also be found in the store. There are even items for those recovering from substance abuse, such as medallions, necklaces and other accessories to mark milestones. But, “We’re not a jewelry store,” Marfiak stressed. “We just have gifts that are geared towards 12-step recovery.” Most often, Creative services clients putting on bar and bat mitzvahs and weddings. Agoura Hills resident Gail Kagan visited the store while planning her oldest son’s bar mitzvah in 2004. She is now enlisting the services of the business as she plans another son’s bar mitzvah. “The first bar mitzvah was such a success, from the name board to the sign-in board to the decorations,” Kagan said. “Their name really suits them. They’re very creative.” Particularly, Kagan was impressed by how much her son and his friends enjoyed the balloon centerpieces Marfiak made for the event. “He made a beautiful centerpiece that reflected trophies of the different sports,” she said. “All the kids wanted it. It wasn’t like I wasted the money on centerpieces.” Kagan has also used Creative for a surprise birthday party for her husband. “They had balloons on the floor. Balloons on the ceiling,” she recalled. “I keep going back to them.” Kagan first discovered the company in the phonebook after contacting similar stores she decided were too expensive. Creative regularly gives consumers a discount off the retail price of its products. For example, 300 wedding invitations with a retail price of $375 might be sold for $100, Knowles said. Bouquets of seven arranged latex balloons are available for $15. There is also a $55 balloon bouquet, which comes with free delivery. In addition to the prices, Kagan is also impressed by Knowles’ and Marfiak’s dispositions. “They’re very pleasant to work with,” she said. “They’re easygoing. They have great ideas, and they’re not pushy, how other places kind of push their ideas.” Kagan said the two have given her suggestions but have never behaved in a way that implied she had to follow their lead. “A lot of people think, ‘oh, I have to find a party planner,'” Kagan said. “Well, no, you find a place where you feel comfortable.” Kagan, for one, believes that Marfiak and Knowles have come to feel like family. For Winnetka resident Dale Fishman, visiting Creative has become a family affair. That’s because she first found out about the store three years ago from her sister Lynn Ross, a Calabasas resident. Another sister, Sandra Raymer, of Valencia, is also a client. “We’ve gone to them, me and my two sisters, for just about everything,wedding invitations, shower invitations, 21st birthdays, Sweet 16s, a million different things,” Fishman said. Knowles considers it the highest compliment when customers refer loved ones to the store or use the store’s decorations for a series of family-related events. Fishman’s sisters aren’t the only relatives who have become fans of the store. Creative made her daughter-in-law’s baby shower invitations. The invitations had a Noah’s Ark theme because that was the theme chosen for the baby’s nursery. Each invitation featured plastic animals embellished with fur from stuffed animals. To Fishman’s delight, the wording of the invitation also matched the theme. “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Rachel is having a new little guy,” they said. According to Fishman, the invitations for her son’s engagement party and her niece’s baby shower were infused with the same personal touch. That’s because Knowles allows for customer input, Fishman said. “We work on everything together like a team.” An accountant who moved from Las Cruces, N.M., to the Valley five years ago, Knowles had no prior retail experience before buying Creative from its previous owner in 2003. She simply figured that if she adhered to the Golden Rule, customers would be content with the service. She tries to keep in mind the adage that if customers are happy with a company’s service, they will praise it to five others. In contrast, if customers are unhappy with service, they will complain about it to 20 others. “We try to make sure no one comes out of here unhappy,” she said. After relocating to California in 2003 to be with her life partner, Marfiak, who then had recently been laid off from a position in the computer industry, Knowles made a rather abrupt decision to buy the business. At that time, the store had been in existence for six years. “I was looking for a job,” Knowles remembered. This led to her perusing the want ads in the business section of her newspaper. There, she saw that Creative Invitations and Balloons was for sale. That very day, a Friday, she visited the store. By Monday, papers were drawn up to turn the business over to her. Three weeks later, it was officially hers. The previous owner was going in the direction of producing scrapbooks, Marfiak said. However, he and Knowles were keen on custom balloon and invitation decorating. They decided that Knowles would focus on the invitation segment of the business, while Marfiak would concentrate on balloons. While an intuitive approach was adopted for customer service, more practical methods were employed for developing business acumen. “I was constantly going to the Chamber of Commerce,” Knowles recalled. She also took a class about how to advertise on Google, which she believes helped increase Web traffic on the store’s site, www.creativesos.com. Additionally, Knowles joined a networking group of 20 people, advertised in the Yellow Pages and learned the best way to market by consistently questioning customers about what led them to the store a friend, the Yellow Pages or the Internet? “I can do bookkeeping,” Knowles said of her accounting background, “but it didn’t help me. Knowing what to do was all trial and error. Fortune kept us here. We have great customers.” Creative Invitations and Balloons Location: Woodland Hills Year Established: 1997 Revenues in 2005: $120,000 Anticipated Revenue in 2007: $150,000 Employees in 2005: 2 Employees in 2007 2 Driving Force: Offering personalized service with a great attitude and listening to customers.

I’m no Harvard economist, but I do try to keep an ear to the ground as part of my business. And I believe I see a potential financial perfect storm coming in 2008, which will be quite unique in our most recent economic history. As I often do, I’ll borrow a metaphor from “The Last Chance Millionaire,” written by my friend, Douglas Andrew. In describing the three “lodging places” for investment funds in America, Doug refers to the real estate market as the “House of Sticks,” with a moderate risk of loss for investors, the stock market as a “House of Straw,” with the highest potential for risk, and banks and insurance products as the “House of Bricks,” with guarantees and the least level of risk. Now certainly there’s a million variations of how to play these three for sophisticated investors, no matter what directions markets take. They’ll be okay no matter which way the wind blows. But I do so worry about the rest of us that make up the bulk of the baby boomers, fast approaching their retirement years with maybe $100,000 in their 401(k) a drop in the bucket and their equity in their home as what was, until recently, their most aggressively performing investment, now drifting back out to sea. Most of us still have our heads down trying to make an income for the next 10 years, let alone having spare hours to sharpen our investment timing skills for the turbulent markets ahead. You see, in the past, you could almost predictably make a play back and forth between real estate and the stock market and it seemed that they just about always were great money makers, but roughly reciprocal to each other. You could almost count on it. And when you couldn’t count on it, funds fled to the House of Bricks, i.e. bank CD’s and money markets. Today though, with no easy fix on the credit market to buoy real estate, and every attempt the Fed makes to stimulate the economy weakening the dollar, I see no clear reason for either the stock market to zoom off in the near future nor for real estate to come back hard. Another great concern I have is that we’ve got some compelling pressures looming in the distance to raise marginal income tax levels across the boards to manage the debt and thereby fortify the dollar. But there’s a sure tightrope big national deficit weakens the dollar, raise taxes to pay the debt, and thereby kill the economy, while decimating the boomer’s IRA and 401(k) taxable withdrawals. It sums up this way for 2008: 1) The real estate market is falling fast, along with the potential retirement wealth that Boomers and GenXers thought they would be able to tap to aid their retirement. 2) The stock market could go anywhere, but is likely to be volatile for some time to come, and/or we may just be looking at a slow growth a la the 1970’s. 3) If the deficit keeps rising upward to cover Boomer Social Security and Medicare needs, the dollar could continue to weaken and Asia or Europe will rule. 4) Just as Boomers seriously enter retirement, if the debt is to be mitigated, expect to see some serious increases in income tax levels. I say all this because our firm has routinely employed a safe, passively-managed stance that we believe negotiates the coming waters with peace of mind. It would be unfair not to share it. It’s not for everyone, nor is it perfect, but it is a conservative option for a lot of working people who need to preserve what equity value is left in their homes or other properties. If your advisor has read Andrew’s “Last Chance Millionaire” and follows it precisely, they should be able to implement it for you. First, remove every bit of equity from your properties that you can, before the rest of it floats out to sea. It could be 10 years before you’ll get it back if you don’t do this now. Second, the repositioned “cash” must grow in a tax-free environment, to help give you a conservative spread over the largely tax-deductible cost of the mortgaged funds. In our offices, we customarily engineer life insurance products to enable the tax-free retirement income benefits, but be sure to ratchet down any internal insurance costs to a bare minimum with the lowest allowable death benefit. Third, the insurance products open the door to two well-hedged crediting methods that fit the uncertain future: products that offer 140 percent of the annual performance of the S & P; 500, but lock-in annual gains against loss with minimum guarantees; and products that follow the Hang Seng, Eurostox, and S & P; 500 index for five years, and credit a weighted return proportionately (75 percent/25 percent) from the top performing two of these indices, and throw out the worst, all in hindsight at the end of the five years. What this effectively does is perpetually harvest returns from either the House of Straw (stock market) or the House of Sticks (real estate), should there be any growth at all, and then locks it into the House of Bricks with minimum guarantees against future loss of those gains wherever they are made. Therefore what the markets giveth they can not taketh away. It’s a tax-free, conservative approach, if properly implemented. Bruce M. Weide is the author of “Getting Rid of Taxes in Business and Retirement;” co-host of KRLA’s “Straight Talk Real Estate;” and President of Tax-Free Benefit Specialists & Insurance Services. He can be reached at [email protected] or by calling (818) 249-7249.