Word: annelies
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...content with selling 400,000 vibrators a year in Britain, privately held Ann Summers has embarked on an aggressive expansion program. It is increasing the number of its British stores to 75 and pushing its Internet sales. In July it opened the first overseas Ann Summers shop, in Sydney, Australia. Earlier this month it opened a new two-story, 5,000-sq.-ft. store--complete with a coffee bar--on Dublin's fashionable O'Connell Street. And the firm plans to open outlets early next year in Tokyo and even Saudi Arabia. Gold is also keen to take...
Experts strongly recommend, too, that managers communicate effectively with nightworkers. At the UCLA Medical Center, an e-mail system was recently installed to improve communications, but Lea Ann Cook, a director at the transplant/surgical specialties intensive-care units, noticed that nurses were still frustrated at having limited access to classes and training and "still don't feel in the loop, because [e-mail] can't replace human contact." At firms such as Schwab, management works hard at dealing with night employees just as they would dayworkers...
Even more than aiming to attract talent, executives say they're focused on the bottom line. "Our investment is in keeping health-care costs down," says D'Ann Whitehead, preventive-health-services manager at Chevron. A study by the MEDSTAT Group consulting firm found that over the past eight years, Chevron had held medical expenses flat and slashed worker sick days by using everything from massage to smoking restrictions...
...shops: seedy, if not downright sinister; XXX signs plastered on blacked-out windows in shady neighborhoods; frequented mainly by men. When it comes to the flesh industry, Europe, for all its sophistication, wasn't much different from the U.S. Then along came Ann Summers, a British chain of sex emporiums, and things began to change. The 23 Ann Summers stores scattered across Britain are on main shopping streets and geared specifically to women. Brightly lighted and decorated in pastels, the shops manage to make the selling of erotic lingerie and sex aids seem more naughty than nasty...
Women are a lucrative, if previously ignored, market for sex merchants. And Ann Summers--"a company run by women for women"--has successfully homed in using traditional grass-roots marketing techniques, mainly home-party sales. "We're exactly like Tupperware, but a bit more fun," explains Gold. Ann Summers hauled in $22.5 million for the year ending June 30, 1998. Seventy percent came from home-party sales (which include Internet and catalog purchases); the shops account for the rest. But that equation may soon change...