How 2 Make Business

Chiquita Brands International sells many bananas - and other products too - as evidenced by their sales data. Their approximate annual revenue is .5B. Trading on the NYSE, the company is part of the Farm Products industry and has their headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. They are a marketer and distributor of bananas, other fruits, and convenient green salads.

Their primary brands are Chiquita and Fresh Express. Chiquita acquired Fresh Express in June of 2005. Fresh Express is the packaged salad and fresh-cut fruit business that Chiquita purchased from Performance Food Group. Chiquita normally gains 59 percent of their sales from European and other international markets, and 41 percent from North America.

The company operates three business segments. The banana segment sources, transports and distributes their top-quality bananas around the world. Their salads and healthy snacks segment distributes value-added salads and fresh vegetable and fruit ingredients used in the food service industry. This segment also has a fresh-cut fruit operation and processed fruit ingredient products. Their third segment is other produce, which sources, markets, and distributes whole, fresh fruits and vegetables, other than bananas.

Chiquita’s sales mix is 43 percent for bananas, 30 percent for other produce, 25 percent for salads and healthy snacks, and 2 percent for other products. They have been marketing their brand of bananas for over 100 years. Latest figures (2006) show they sold 144 million boxes of these bananas. They have the number one market for bananas in the European Union, and the number two share in North America.

Chiquita was incorporated in 1899 in New Jersey. They have approximately 25,000 employees in over 80 countries. All of their company-owned banana farms in Latin America earned Rainforest Alliance Certification. They work with independent farmers to ensure their farms meet the standards of the Rainforest Alliance. Chiquita has those bananas and other products, and hopes to provide value from them to their customers and shareholders alike for years to come.

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Brown Shoe Co. Inc. is a company that began with one man’s dream back in 1878. In that year, George Warren Brown invested all his life savings to open a small business that would manufacture and sell his shoes. It did just that, and today Brown Shoes is a multi-billion dollar corporation.

With headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri, where George Brown first opened his business, Brown Shoe Co. Inc. is a global operation. They have 13,000 employees worldwide as part of the Textile: Apparel Footwear and Accessories industry. The company lists on the NYSE with a current market cap of 2.68M.

The company’s revenue mix is 61 percent from their retail operations and 39 percent from their wholesale operations. They operate their Famous Footwear division, which has over 1,100 stores in 50 states. This division sells brand-name shoes for the family. The company also operates a specialty retail division, which has 300 stores in the United States and Canada. This division sells shoes under the Naturalizer, FX LaSalle, Franco Sarto, and Brown Shoe Closet names.

Brown Shoe Co. Inc. has an ecommerce subsidiary called Shoes.com… as well as a wholesale division. Their wholesale division owns and markets top names such as Naturalizer, Life Stride, Via Spiga, Nickels Soft, Connie, and Buster Brown. In 1904, at the World’s Fair in St. Louis, the Brown Shoe Co., then 25 years old, bought the licensing rights to the Buster Brown name for 0 from New York Herald cartoonist Richard Outcault, the man behind the Buster Brown comic strip character.

The company also markets licensed brands of shoes. These brands are Franco Sarto, Dr. Scholl’s, Etienne Aigner, and Carlos by Carlos Santana. They also sell Barbie, Disney, and Nickelodeon character footwear for children.

Brown Shoe Co. Inc. continues to push forward with the dream started by their founder, George Warren Brown back in St. Louis. Their commitment is to quality shoes for the whole family across all their locations. The company declared a quarterly dividend of {content}.07 cents per share on May 22, 2008. They hope to continue to provide income growth for their shareholders, as the company walks in the footsteps of a man who had a dream so long ago.

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Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD) is freezing prices on most AIDS/HIV drugs it sells to government drug-assistance programs, and limiting even patients with private insurance to payments of per month.

In response to AIDS patient advocacy groups, the Foster City, CA developer and manufacturer of some of the best-selling treatments to suppress the AIDS virus said it will suspend price increases on its antiretroviral drugs to government payers through 2010.

The decision came in a letter from Gregg Alton, Gilead’s senior vice president and general counsel, to the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in Los Angeles.

Alton, who is also on the board of the foundation, cited concerns raised by the foundation, the Fair Pricing Coalition and other groups. The foundation in March asked nine drugmakers to freeze their prices due to state budget constraints.

Gilead charges state drug assistance programs 0 a month for its best-selling HIV drug Truvada, a pill that combines Gilead drugs Viread and Emtriva. Separately, Viread costs 2 and Emtriva 9 monthly.

Atripla, a single, once-a-day pill that combines Truvada with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s Sustiva, costs ,323 per month wholesale. Gilead controls pricing for the Truvada portion of Atripla only.

Truvada already is one of the most affordable HIV drugs, Alton said in his letter, adding that Atripla and Truvada are priced “at parity to the components, rather than positioned at the higher price point allowed” by state programs.

Gilead’s decision to limit co-payments to per month — as well as to cover co-payment costs up to 0 per month — does not affect a large number of HIV patients today, Alton said. But, he added, “we recognize there is a discernible trend in this direction.”

“The financial impact (of the freeze) is expected to be minimal, as we are limited in our ability to take price increases with government payers, particularly so given the economy and inflationary environment,” spokeswoman Amy Flood said in an email response to questions.

President Bush’s proposed fiscal 2009 budget includes million more for AIDS drug assistance programs, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation said, but that is largely offset by an estimated 2.88 percent Consumer Price Index-based price increase for antiretrovirals.

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