World Trade Posted on: 05/07/2003 By Lara L. Sowinski

One thing's for bloody well sure--they are all absolutely symbiotic," says Lynn Fritz as he explains the highly integrated nature of the supply chain, and the striking effect that individual components can have on the entire supply chain. "What happens to one is going to have a definitive action on the others," he emphasizes.

If anyone knows supply chains, it's Lynn Fritz. He turned his family owned domestic documentation company into a global logistics conglomerate that was eventually acquired by UPS two years ago. And while he is an expert in commercial supply chains, his interest in humanitarian supply chains was piqued during his tenure as chairman and CEO of Fritz Companies.

"I remember Turkey. I remember Caracas," Fritz says, reflecting on a five-month period in late 1999 when natural disasters claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people in two separate parts of the world. It started with a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in western Turkey on August 17, 1999, that killed 17,000 people. Three months later, a 7.2 magnitude aftershock killed hundreds more. Then, in the middle of December, Venezuela experienced the worst natural disaster of its history when catastrophic floods and mudslides caused the deaths of nearly 50,000 people along the country's Caribbean coast and in the suburbs of Caracas.

During his conversations with other CEOs around the world at that time, he began noticing that many didn't have a disaster preparedness plan. He also discovered that relief organizations were suffering from a lack of collaboration and coordination on the operational side.

Fritz retained two professors to conduct further research into the operations of relief organizations. "They came back and validated the fact that the people in the field were very talented, innovative, experienced, and did great things with very little tools. However, there were very few methods and little automation-operations were largely manual," he says.

Armed with a greater understanding of the relief organizations' operations and internal processes, Fritz assembled a team of professionals under the Fritz Institute to bring together business best practices, technology, and academic research to enhance the capabilities of humanitarian organizations involved in disaster relief.

Getting a hand around the human supply chain

Lynn Fritz and Fritz Institute staffers greet children on a recent visit to Lesotho.It's not an exaggeration to say that few things have had as dramatic an impact on supply chains as information technology, which has raised efficiency, communication, and visibility to new heights. But while there are core similarities, "software for relief organizations' supply chains is uniquely different from that intended for commercial supply chains," Fritz says.

That's why the Fritz Institute began working with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)--the world's largest humanitarian network--to design a customized web-based humanitarian logistics software that would track information from the origin of a donation or pledge all the way to delivery of supplies to the field warehouse.

"It took us over 3000 hours spent interviewing the IFRC," during the initial development stages of the software, says Fritz. The software will standardize the process of disaster resource mobilization; automate manual processes and reduce redundancies; and establish a means for measuring results. Indeed, being able to quantify outcomes is essential, explains Fritz. "We do solutions now. We do not engage with anybody that is not absolutely, totally agreeable to measurement and accountability." With 178 members around the world, the software promises to have a tremendous influence on the IFRC's operations.

According to Fritz, the exceptional challenges of managing a humanitarian supply chain have generated a lot of excitement from logistics experts. He tells of a professor friend who has consulted for leading multinationals, including Heineken, on their supply chains. "The guy's an algorithmic genius, and he says to me, 'I have to be involved with you. Think about it; disasters are the embodiment of randomness. You don't know when they're going to happen, where it's going to happen, and who's going to be affected. This is the ultimate execution of a sophisticated supply chain, particularly from an algorithmic planning basis. Every other supply chain is based on predictability.' That's why the things that are learned from humanitarian supply chains will be so important even to commercial supply chains."

The humanitarian logistics software, aside from being the first of its kind, will help relief organizations get a handle on another unique challenge--fluctuating budgets. "There's a lot of turnover when it comes to relief organizations because crises are cyclical, as are their budgets, especially the operational budget," says Fritz. Relief budgets are typically skewed toward providing direct relief for the victims of disasters, and not for infrastructure services. Most times there is little or no money at the end of a relief effort to record or codify best practices. As a consequence, the processes of managing commodities and tracking the information of the complex supply chain under the most dynamic of conditions remains largely manual, ad hoc, and repetitious. Meanwhile, limited institutional memory is kept over the course of successive disasters, further hampering the upgrading of methods and processes.

Another difficulty facing disaster relief management, Fritz points out, is human nature itself. "There's a profound dissonance in the human condition against preparation for tragedies and disasters, not that we don't know that they're going to happen. On the other hand, there is an extraordinarily positive response from people when they do happen. But, after the tragedy, there's total apathy again." He draws a parallel to the relief organizations' operations. "The way humanitarian aid 'works,' in this context, makes sense when you analyze human behavior."

Calling all scholars

Relief supplies in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.Along with tapping into the expertise and practical experience of the business community, the Fritz Institute sponsors curriculum that will begin teaching disaster management. The institute formed a partnership with Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration to provide specialized professional education and training to leaders in humanitarian relief, and training to improve logistical management in humanitarian disasters. Other partnerships have been formed with INSEAD University in France, Florida International University, Oxford University, and Pepperdine University.

Speaking about the importance of sponsoring education in disaster relief, Fritz remarks, "It makes it an appealing area for young people to invest their lives in." He makes another comparison to the commercial logistics environment. "The word 'logistics' wasn't even used in the industry 25 or 30 years ago, and there was no formal education available. Everything was learned on-the-job." Fritz adds, "Disaster relief management as a science has evolved just like logistics evolved to mean everything--customs brokerage, warehousing, freight forwarding, etc."

The Fritz Institute is also passionate about putting organizations together to convene. Last January, the institute helped facilitate one of the largest gatherings of relief organizations ever. In addition to sharing knowledge and experience, "convening will also generate a list of 'hot things' that need to be addressed," Fritz says, adding, "The convenings are not just for relief groups, but also for academicians."

Globalization: friend or foe?

Along with the WTO, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has received a fair amount of heat from anti-globalizationists. As co-chair of the WEF's Disaster Relief Network steering committee, Fritz could easily be found guilty by association. Nonetheless, "Nobody seems to have issues with operations," he says. "People have issues with political fund raising, where you go, why you go there. When you're there on the ground doing the work, nobody seems to mind." While he can empathize with anti-globalization critics, he defends the mission of the Fritz Institute by saying, "We're not political, we're operational."

Sidebar: IFRC's Supply Chain

Global supply chains encompass much more than transportation and logistics, as WORLD TRADE's profiles of leading manufacturers has consistently shown. Likewise, the humanitarian supply chain exercised by relief organizations such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) illustrates the various aspects that comprise a global supply chain. -- Lara L. Sowinski

Global Sourcing. For relief organizations, this depends on the location of the disaster. However, the IFRC pre-sources by region--Africa (Johannesburg); Europe (Turkey); Asia (Kuala Lumpur); Middle East (Geneva); and the Americas (Panama)--through their regional supply headquarters. They try to source locally at the disaster site for as much as feasible and to conduct international procurement for the best prices based on the best value around the world. The IFRC maintains enterprise agreements for items like blankets, tents, tarps, certain emergency rations, and WHO medical kits that are consistent across disasters.

Site Selection and Economic Development. Again, this is based on proximity to the disaster. Warehouses are determined at the country level, while national relief societies handle distribution and may have their own warehouses. In the meantime, the technology supply chain is not consistent everywhere, so quality and processes are not standardized by geography or disaster. Logistics practices and customs laws also vary by country and are not defined in countries without governments (i.e. Angola's warlords).

Transportation & Logistics. All modes of transportation are used in relief efforts--air, ocean, and road, and sometimes range from donkeys to trucks to ships and helicopters. The mode of transportation depends upon route conditions and disaster conditions, as well as the country's infrastructure. For instance, a 10-metric-ton truck cannot drive through small villages or across mountainous terrains. When commercial transportation is used, NGOs usually pay a higher price because it's project based rather than fixed volume.

IT & Software. The IFRC uses the most common computer applications, such as email and databases. The organization's collaboration with the Fritz Institute resulted in a newly designed, comprehensive humanitarian logistics software, which is the first web-based solution from origin to destination, providing total pipeline visibility to donors. The humanitarian logistics software is customized for acute disasters.

Telecommunications. In first-world countries telecom resources are modern, but oversubscribed during emergencies. In most countries there is not sufficient infrastructure, and what is available is oversubscribed during emergencies.

Public release date: 5-May-2003 Contact: Karl Leif Bates batesk@umich.edu 734-647-1842 eurekalert.org-University of Michigan

Bleeding disorder tied to defect in cellular transport mechanism

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Defects in a cargo receptor that shuttles proteins from one place to another within the cell lie at the root of a rare bleeding disorder, according to a study published in the June issue of the journal Nature Genetics.

An international research team led by David Ginsburg of the University of Michigan's Life Sciences Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute examined the genes of 19 patients from 12 families with a rare bleeding disorder called Combined Deficiency of Factor V and Factor VIII, or F5F8D for short. The group has concluded that the bleeding disorder isn't due to a problem within these two clotting factors themselves; it's a problem of transporting the factors inside the cell.

Rather than addressing this question with a biochemical approach to the transporter proteins, Ginsburg said they used genetic analysis of the diseased families to find the problem. "That's the power of genetics," he said. "We can learn some fundamental things about biology by looking at the genes of these families with a rare disease."

Factor V and Factor VIII are just two of the many proteins that participate in a complex cascade of chemical reactions that lead to blood clotting. Various forms of abnormal bleeding and clotting have been tied to problems in many of these blood factors, but this disorder simultaneously involves two factors.

Earlier work on the disorder had identified a genetic mutation that causes defects in a protein called LMAN1, which apparently prevented a cell from secreting Factor V and Factor VIII. But about 30 percent of the F5F8D patients had normal levels of LMAN1, so this mutation alone couldn't account for all of the disease. The F5F8D patients in this study were all normal for LMAN1.

What the researchers found is that a mutation in a second gene, called MCFD2, can result in the same disease state. (MCFD2 is short for multiple coagulation factor deficiency 2.) The team identified seven distinct mutations in the MCFD2 gene which appeared in nine of the 12 families studied.

The researchers propose that these two proteins, LMAN1 and MCFD2, bind together to form a transporter which is specifically tailored to carry the two blood clotting factors from the cell's endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi body. A mutation in the gene that makes either of the two proteins will result in a malformed transporter, and thus the inability to secrete Factor V and Factor VIII.

This work on bleeding disorders may also provide a solution for the opposite problem, clotting disorders. A drug that targeted the MCFD2 protein could reduce both Factor V and Factor VIII, lowering the risk of unwanted blood coagulation. Ginsburg said such a drug might be an attractive alternative to the oral anticoagulants, such as coumadin, because it would not affect other clotting factors. Ginsburg's lab is currently pursuing MCFD2 as a therapeutic target, and the U-M technology transfer office has applied for a patent.

There are still three families in the study who have the bleeding disorder, but weren't found to have mutations in either the LMAN1 or MCFD2 genes. "It's possible that we just missed it in the genetic screen, but it's also possible that there is a third gene involved," Ginsburg said.

Ginsburg's co-author on this work and others involving Factor VIII and LMAN1 is Randal Kaufman, a U-M biological chemistry professor and Howard Hughes investigator. U-M research investigator Bin Zhang is the first author on the paper. Ginsburg is the Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor of Medicine, departments of internal Medicine and Human Genetics, a charter member of the Life Sciences Institute and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Co-authors from Tel Aviv, London, Berlin and Caracas, Venezuela participated by sharing F5F8D patients.

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Hemophilia Foundation and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

Links "Bleeding due to disruption of a cargo-specific ER-to-Golgi transport complex" is available online at Nature Genetics - www.nature.com Life Sciences Institute – lifesciences.umich.edu Howard Hughes Medical Institute - www.hhmi.org National Hemophilia Foundation - www.hemophilia.org

Story last updated at 8:40 a.m. Monday, May 5, 2003 BY WEVONNEDA MINIS Of The Post and Courier Staff

Tending to the physical needs of sick children is what Dr. Todd Vasko does best. Three days of most work weeks, the young pediatrician can be found doing just that in his West Ashley office.

However, in late May and early June, Vasko's location changes for a while. That's when he goes on a medical mission with students and professionals in the MUSC community. In the past he has gone to Venezuela, but this year he will be leading a 10-day medical mission to a South African orphanage. To Vasko, it's part of being a compassionate physician. Compassion also is a quality Vasko tries to instill in students at MUSC while working Tuesdays and Fridays as director of the university's Medical Campus Outreach -- an interdenominational Christian organization.

On May 22, Vasko will leave for South Africa with 131 others from MUSC, including Dr. Philip McGaha and Dr. John Traynham, two other doctors with whom Vasko shares a practice at Plantation Pediatrics.

YALONDA M. JAMES/STAFF Dr. Todd Vasko of Plantation Pediactrics in West Ashley, director of the Medical Campus Outreach, stands with donated items he an 131 others from MUSC will take to an orphanage in South Africa. It was McGaha who showed Vasko the meaning of being Christian when they were medical students in Georgia. He also spends time at MUSC helping to ensure it graduates professionals who are compassionate, as well as competent and who have good character.

Medical Campus Outreach's goal is to: "... build laborers on medical school campuses for the lost world to the glory of God."

A Georgia-based Christian organization called Evangelism Task Force is organizing the trip for the campus outreach group. Its missionaries scout out locations where medical school students and professionals are desperately needed. If a group on a medical college campus chooses one of its locations, the task force will perform the administrative tasks necessary to get the group there and back.

The MUSC group will be working in the town of Thohoyandou, located in northeast South Africa, helping the Venda people.

The Vendas used to live in Zimbabwe but moved down into South Africa in the early 1700s. The task force's missionaries who are assigned there say the Vendas worship their ancestors, are superstitious and consult witch doctors.

The children in the orphanage are trying to function despite missing limbs and other challenges, Vasko says.

Some also have sight or hearing losses or both. In some cases, their injuries have been caused by trauma.

In other cases, the children were born with them.

"Their parents were unable to care for them and left them there," says Vasko.

PROVIDED Vasko joins students in considering the medical needs of a young Venezuelan boy during a previous mission trip. "We will see a need there that is far beyond what we will be able to treat.

"Maybe we will assess their needs and go back and do corrective surgeries at Christmas or next summer.

"Hopefully every kid will get a physical."

The MUSC students and doctors will help the Venda children with health problems in such areas as orthopedics; ear, nose and throat; pediatric allergy; pediatric neurology; dentistry; physical therapy and occupational therapy.

Those in the group will take more than their skills and the box of medicines each will carry, Vasko says.

They will take the love of Jesus Christ, he says. They will take it to children such as one little boy with missing arms who only asks for plastic foam arms to fill out his shirt sleeves.

"If one child could see that somebody loves him enough to come halfway around the world to provide him with fake arms and tell him about Jesus, it will be worth (the journey)," Vasko says.

PROVIDED Children at an orphanage in Thohoyandou, South Africa, where MUSC's Medical Campus Outreach and Georgia-based Evangelism Task Force will conduct a 10-day medical mission. "It is very important to attend to the children's medical needs, but the walker or wheelchair (given to a child) could break the week after we leave, but Christ can change their lives forever," he says.

Michelle Sanders, a first-year physical therapy student, can't wait to work with the children at the orphanage and see life in another country for the first time. Yet, it took her two weeks to decide to join the medical mission.

She considers herself a Christian but had reservations about joining an evangelical mission. Once she met some of the people who are going, their kindness and sincerity about their purpose overcame her concerns.

"I think it's going to be one of those experiences of a lifetime," Sanders says. The group has been preparing for its mission by studying the Vendas' cultural values. One thing the women have learned is that their legs should be covered with pants or long skirts.

While the mission's main focus will be the orphanage, some of those in the group will go to the local hospital, where there is a shortage of specialists, to demonstrate techniques that can help hospital workers take better care of their patients.

Like most of the people going on the trip, Sanders had to solicit donations from others to cover the $2,350 cost of travel, housing, food and other expenses. So far, she's been able to get $1,830 just by requesting donations from everyone in her address book.

Currently, the group is collecting many of the items patients will need, such as braces, canes, walkers and wheelchairs.

They are asking vendors in the Lowcountry to give them new supplies or old ones that can be repaired.

They also are writing brochures for those who visit the clinic to take home, so they can continue their treatments once the group leaves.

PROVIDED Vasko examines a child at a mission clinic set up by the Medical Campus Outreach in Venezuela last summer. The group’s mission is aimed at saving souls as well as lives. Jim Mathews, project director for Evangelism Task Force, says no one in South Africa will be charged to see a doctor or other health care worker.

"We use the medicine to bring people into the clinic so we can share the gospel with them," says Mathews.

"We charge them nothing to be seen by the doctor, all that we ask is that they give us 15 minutes to share the gospel."

Usually a separate part of the clinic is set up just for that purpose, Mathews says.

He estimates the MUSC group will treat about 1,400 people while in South Africa. The number they treat will depend on how many show up.

"The need is always great. We could go and spend six months in an area, and there would still be people who needed to be treated -- that's true in any Third World country."

This year ETF offered MUSC a choice of missions to Ecuador, Peru and South Africa, Mathews says.

It had offered Venezuela for the past four years, but political unrest there has made it unsafe to offer it as a destination this year.

At 132, the MUSC group is the largest ETF mission this year. The average group has from 12 to 20 people and the largest ever is 170. Dr. John Powell, a pediatrician and the organization's founder, plans to travel with the group.

One of the student leaders on the South Africa mission will be Angie Mullins. This will be her third mission.

"Every year, it's just changed my life. It's given me an appreciation for using the gifts the Lord has blessed me with."

Mullins says that while in Venezuela, she saw the prayers of those all around her being answered.

She also felt a sense of increased strength and boundless energy while working. Medical professionals in the country were on strike, and the need was larger than she and the others had anticipated.

At times when she should have found it impossible to do anything but sleep, she was able to focus on others' needs and continue working.

That ability to carry on could only have been a gift from God, she says.

Whether at the hospital or the orphanage, the group will make the best of whatever situation it finds and will remember that treating the people and ministering to them are equally important.

"If we can train those doctors and children, we can change that community," Vasko says.

<a href=www.thestar.com>The Toronto Star May. 3, 2003. 09:30 AM DAVID OLIVE

TOP OF THE CEO CLASS: Clive Beddoe is one of a select number of corporate leaders who have made a real difference to their companies' performance.

The "great man theory of history" took a beating in the epic collapse of financial markets two years ago.

It turns out many CEOs who claimed to be reinventing their industries — or creating new ones from scratch — didn't have the staying power to survive the first economic downturn they faced.

Ditto those who equated themselves with Michael Jordan in justifying their superstar compensation, and vied with J-Lo for ubiquity on magazine covers.

Yet while celebrity CEOs are now out, the theory about how much one leader can accomplish has not been thoroughly undermined after all.

Two of the top 10 companies highlighted in the Star's first annual report card on Canada's top-performing CEOs would not exist but for the persistence of their founder-CEOs — Clive Beddoe's Westjet Airlines Ltd., one of just three consistently profitable airlines in North America; and John Forzani's Forzani Group Ltd., one of the continent's leading sporting goods retailers.

At each of the 10 firms, risky turnaround, expansion and globalization strategies have been driven by CEOs who have put their personal stamp on both the organization and their industry.

For the past decade, Dofasco Inc.'s John Mayberry has been perhaps the most credible spokesperson for a North American steel industry that has seen about a dozen U.S. steel makers seek refuge in bankruptcy protection in the past two years.

And by risking billions of dollars on efforts to upgrade the efficiency of his oil-sands operation at Suncor Energy Inc., Rick George is incidentally making a case for Canada's immense oil-sands reserves as an alternative to the Mideast, Venezuela, Nigeria and other politically volatile oil-producing regions.

Yet these CEOs do differ from the over-hyped leaders of the pre-boom days. Forsaking big-picture talk about "vision" and "convergence," they're deeply immersed in the unglamorous details of their businesses — picking a high-traffic location for their next store, or an out-of-the-way airport with cheaper landing fees for each new city that Westjet serves, or experimenting with winning playlists at Astral Media Inc.'s growing network of radio stations in Quebec.

These are not attention-seeking leaders. "I'm only famous for my big machines," says Rick George, who's happy to surrender the limelight to Suncor's three-storey bitumen extracting trucks at Fort McMurray, Alta.

The only household name on our list is Westjet's Beddoe, who saves money by not advertising his product on television. So his marketing staff is thrilled at Beddoe's repeated TV news appearances in which his comments are sought on the chronic woes at arch-rival Air Canada. They correctly see this as the best, most credible type of advertising.

But Beddoe's annoyance with overdog Air Canada is sincere. And the chip on this Westerner's shoulder is real. "So this is the centre of the universe," was the Calgary-based Beddoe's first comment at a meeting with the Star's editorial board.

Strategies for confronting adversity are the common bond among this year's outstanding CEOs.

Dofasco's Mayberry, who retired yesterday after almost 11 years as CEO, took a series of low-key steps to weather tough times in global steel making. He locked up long-term supply contracts with auto and appliance makers and other key clients to limit Dofasco's exposure to swings in the spot market.

Mayberry also spent some $2 billion on technology upgrades over the past decade to offer clients higher-quality steel. And he gained access to the fast-growing market for mini-mill products by taking a 50 per cent stake in a mini-mill startup in Kentucky.

That slow-and-steady approach has paid off for Dofasco, which reported a first-quarter profit of $47.1 million in April in contrast to a $44 million loss at cross-town rival Stelco Inc. After experimenting disastrously with a short-lived takeover of Algoma Steel Inc. in the late 1980s, Dofasco under its new CEO Mayberry swore off the acquisitions that have since proved difficult for industry consolidators in the United States and Europe.

"We haven't seen too many people turning (mergers) into gold," Mayberry told analysts recently. "We still have this funny, old-fashioned belief that you should earn your cost of capital if you're going to make an investment."

Westjet's Beddoe is equally cautious. He is an irrepressible mascot for Westjet's latest route additions in Halifax, Windsor and Montreal. But Westjet, founded in 1996, was 3 years old before its fleet numbered eight aircraft — a benchmark that upstart Jetsgo Corp. has reached in its first few months of operation.

Each new Westjet destination is expected to be profitable in its own right, not merely as a feeder of traffic to the larger network. If new routes aren't paying for themselves within a year, flight frequency and pricing are fiddled with until the formula is right.

And for all its ambitions to rival, and perhaps overtake, Air Canada on domestic routes, Westjet still hedges its bets by renting aircraft to tour operators flying to Las Vegas and sunspots in Mexico and the Caribbean. Maximizing the use of costly aircraft is one reason why Westjet has logged more than two dozen consecutive profitable quarters.

Westjet's latest quarterly results, released last week, gave ample reason for a cautious approach. Wartime fuel-price increases and a drop in traffic, along with costs in expanding the aircraft fleet, caused profits to plunge 89 per cent.

Global expansion is one way to reduce dependence on a maturing domestic market

George's setback with an ill-fated shale oil project in Australia strengthened his conviction that Suncor needed to bolster its basic business, extracting crude from the Athabasca tar sands. The payoff from that decision has been enormous.

Beginning in the late 1990s, George invested a staggering $3.4 billion in Suncor's existing oil-sands facility at Fort McMurray, source of some 90 per cent of total profits.

The completed Millennium Project enabled Suncor to nearly double its profits last year, to $761 million. It will also help Suncor double its output by 2010. But George's focus now is on further reductions in production costs to become still more competitive with the $4 to $6 (U.S.) per barrel production costs in the Mideast.

So soon after Millennium, one of the biggest construction projects in Alberta history, George is embarking on the $3 billion Voyageur project at Fort McMurray with the goal of further efficiency improvements that will cut his production costs from $13 to $10 per barrel. Ultimately, George wants Suncor to emerge as the world's fifth- or sixth-largest producer, drawing still more attention to the fact that the Athabasca region accounts for one-third of the world's oil reserves.

Sporting-goods merchant John Forzani coped with adversity by learning how to manage the growth unleashed by his too-rapid acquisitions of competing chains, most notoriously of the large but unprofitable Quebec-based Sports Experts in the early 1990s. That deal created a national chain, but was marred by a culture clash between Forzani's entrepreneurial, English-speaking executives at Calgary head office and the more bureaucratic francophones at the new acquisition.

Retreat was in order, but Forzani and capable lieutenants he recruited soon imposed cost and inventory controls for the first time on their newly enlarged empire. They dumped money-losing locations, and took a Loblaw Cos. Ltd. approach to tracking sales of every item on a daily basis to learn exactly what was selling, where and at what price.

Today, as Forzani hands over the reins to one of those lieutenants, Bob Sartor, his company is posting its sixth consecutive year of record profits.

Through painstaking experimentation, the company has learned how to "de-seasonalize" the sporting goods business by offering an astonishingly wide variety of goods, from fashionable ski wear to golf togs, and from snowboards to in-line skates. The eclectic product mix helped Forzani subdue big-box interlopers from the United States.

Other top-performing CEOs have responded to tough conditions by expanding globally in a risky bid to reduce dependence on a maturing market.

At a struggling Cott Corp. in the late 1990s, turnaround CEO Frank Weise wasted no time after refinancing the firm and shedding such distractions as a pet-food subsidiary in staking the company's future on international expansion.

Under its late founder, Gerry Pencer, Cott became a stock-market darling by growing rapidly, a strategy that brought the firm to near ruin and which the new CEO was expected to abandon.

Instead, after implementing a rigorous cost-control regime, Weise has rekindled Cott's old reputation as a growth play with five soundly financed acquisitions in the past three years. These have strengthened Cott's position in the United States, where it now has 7 per cent of its market niche, and in Mexico, whose 100 million people have the world's second-highest per capita consumption of soft drinks, trailing only the United States.

But that is not a pell-mell growth strategy. Like Magna International Inc., which builds its new auto-parts factories alongside the assembly plants of its auto-maker clients, Cott now grows safely in tandem with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other key customers for its private-label beverages, letting those bigger firms take the brunt of the risk in developing new markets.

For Loblaw, meanwhile, Wal-Mart is an adversary, not a partner. Loblaw is the dominant Canadian grocer, but treats Wal-Mart as a serious threat given the latter's hugely successful move into food retailing in the United States.

Before Wal-Mart strikes at Canadian grocers, Loblaw CEO John Lederer is seeking to blunt the threat by challenging Wal-Mart on its own turf of non-food retailing.

A complacent Lederer could easily continue to thrive from Loblaw's unassailable hold on the industry's best real estate, which enables it to plunk No Frills, Zehrs and Fortinos stores in the neighbourhoods of its choice.

Instead, Lederer is pushing his real estate advantage by introducing such grocery store novelties as costume jewellery and Ralph Lauren jeans in his emporia. An increasing number of Loblaw parking lots now boast a gas bar, and Lederer is even experimenting with "dollar stores" within some of his larger outlets, along with expanded pharmacies.

At times, Lederer seems intent on duelling anyone who challenges him for a piece of the consumer dollar. "Why couldn't we sell you a coffee maker, toaster or frying pan?" he asks, when not musing about full-service Loblaw auto-repair centres.

How much of this is pure bluff is not the question. Confronting the world's largest retailer on his own ground, Lederer has gone on the offensive not only against Wal-Mart but Shoppers Drug Mart, Canadian Tire Corp. Ltd. and the growing Everything For A Dollar chain.

It might seem folly to take on all comers. Actually, Lederer is wisely putting rivals on the defensive. And it's not as if Loblaw is straying from its core strength in food in order to slay new dragons.

"Doing food right gives us the ticket" to expand into new niches, Lederer has told Bay Street analysts who might wonder if Loblaw, faced with the Wal-Mart spectre, has begun to forget what business it is in.

"The only obstacle is our ability to execute," he says. "We could do anything we want if we feel it is worthwhile."

An audacious pronouncement, to be sure. But it's torn from the playbook of the late Sam Walton.

Additional articles by David Olive

ContraCostaTimes.com Posted on Fri, May. 02, 2003 By Brian Kluepfel CORRESPONDENT

Although writing is often a solitary activity, many authors feel the need to bounce ideas off each other; to become involved in a larger peer group.

Sometimes, they just want to sit around, drink coffee and complain about how editors aren't returning their phone calls or e-mails.

A collective of East Bay women has provided that setting and more for the past decade, and this month celebrate the publication of their anthology, "Wednesday Writers: 10 Years of Writing Women's Lives."

Each Wednesday at 10 a.m., a group of 10 to 15 writers gather at the Rockridge home of Elizabeth Fishel, who edited the anthology along with Terri Hinte. There, surrounded by a collection of folk art and fortified by trays of snacks, the group takes on the collective and individual task of writing.

Fishel, who also teaches writing classes at UC Berkeley Extension, talked about what makes this group unique.

"It's a nice range of people in terms of ages and backgrounds," said Fishel. "Some are just having children, and some have grandchildren. The real pleasure of group is that writers get to know each other deeply through conversation and work."

Varied inspiration

Befitting the East Bay, it's a multicultural group, with writers from Venezuela, India, England and Denmark included in the anthology. The 57 stories run the gamut, too, from a night spent dancing in Brazil to the slaughter of a goat in India. But Fishel delights in finding the magic in a less exotic surroundings.

"Some of my favorite writing is about ordinary surprises of daily life -- not a trek through the Himalayas or open heart surgery, but about the women who found a dog on Ashby Avenue or one who is sending a daughter to high school for the first time."

Fishel said because the workshop is in her home, rather than a classroom, there is a more intimate feel to the group. "It's a bit like a literary salon," she said. "It feels cozy and private."

It is in this atmosphere of immediacy that these women begin to reveal themselves, first through an open discussion of the business of writing, then through "workshopping" two pieces, and finally, through the exercise of "free writing," during which the authors are given a random topic and let fly for 10 minutes. Each section of the two-hour-and-15-minute meeting has a purpose.

The conversation allows Fishel, who's published four nonfiction books, to share some of the secrets of the trade: writing the perfect query letter, for instance. The group leader noted that the dynamic toward professionalism has changed over the years.

"The group has matured," she said. "It used to be for sheer pleasure of (writing), but we are bringing in more and more serious writers."

Berkeley writer Suzanne LaFetra is one who has benefited from the collective vibe. She joined the group last October --there are spring and fall sessions, each lasting about 10 weeks -- and has since been published in half a dozen local and national publications.

"It's a great group for workshopping and community," said LaFetra. "All writers need some kind of emotional and professional support system."

Editing is key

LaFetra met Fishel through a writing course at UC Extension. In fact, like UC, there is a fee involved in joining Fishel's home-based workshop, which perhaps makes the level of commitment more serious.

The "workshop" portion of the meeting helps to bring developing pieces into sharper focus. In fact, many of the works in the anthology are the result of intense discussion, criticism and revision.

"Willingness to be a rewriter is a hallmark of the Wednesday writers," said Fishel.

LaFetra noted the value of constructive criticism. "You learn how to critique," she said. "That's a skill unto itself." She and Fishel both emphasized that the positive points of a work are first discussed, and then suggestions are made for possible improvement.

The result of a decade's discussions is the elegant anthology printed this year. Although the group always produces one at the end of each semester, "Wednesday Writers" is the first that's been professionally designed and printed. It is available in local bookstores, through Amazon.com and directly from Fishel (erfishel@hotmail.com) for $12.

It's all for a good cause. Proceeds from the book go to the UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center. Fishel lost her own mother to breast cancer, and several women in the group have battled it over the years. Much of that struggle is documented in the anthology section entitled "Healing Words."

"A lot of people in the workshop are going through transitions," Fishel said. "Childbirth, death of a loved one, some kind of upheaval. Writing is a way to process it and understand it, and maybe lighten their load a bit."

READING WHAT: Women's Writing Workshop of Oakland reads from "Wednesday Writers." Proceeds of book sales benefit UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center. WHEN: Sunday May 4, 2 p.m. WHERE: Diesel Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland INFORMATION: 510-653-9965

Brian Kluepfel is a freelance journalist who has lived in the 'burbs, the Bronx, Bolivia and Berkeley. He can be reached at bkluepfel@hotmail.com.