Newspaper Page Text
Business
Ed Weinlein, Candy Hardy, Dowdell Brown
MLMI's president, coordinator, Mobil Corp. president
Mobil Land Inc.
given 3 awards
Mobil Land Marketing Inc. has received three pro
fessionalism awards from the Home Builders Associa
tion of Metropolitan Atlanta. The awards were pre
sented recently at a banquet honoring professionals in
the real estate marketing and development fields.
An affiliate of Mobil Land Development Corp, devel
opers of Windward, the marketing firm captured two
gold awards and a silver award for its advertising and
marketing of Windward. The 3,400-acre, mixed-use
planned community is in south Forsyth/north Fulton.
The first gold award received was for best color
print ad. The add created an umbrella advertising
message for Windward by showing that the develop
ment is a high-quality live, work and play community.
The second gold award was for superior on-site sig
nage at Windward. The silver was for the best black
and white ad.
Last year, M bil Land Marketing won five gold
awards from the Atlanta Home Builders Association.
Bell's Vernon retires
Cumming resident Hugh L. Vernon has retired from
Southern Bell after 31 years of service as assistant
manager.
Vernon began his career in Atlanta as a telephone
repairman and has held positions as switchboard in
staller foreman and central office test desk foreman.
Vernon and his wife Floy Marie live on Sky land
Drive.
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HARBOUR RIDGE Windward Properties Inc., an af
filiate of Mobil Land Development Inc. and The Housing
Group Inc., recently hosted ground-breaking ceremo
nies for Harbour Ridge, the latest residential develop
ment planned for the south Forsyth/north Fulton area.
Pictured from left: Dowdell Brown, president of Wind
ward Properties Inc.; Ed Weinlein, vice president of
Windward; Michael Ray, president of The Housing
Group Inc.; Mayor Jimmy Phillips of Alpharetta; Marie
Garrett, director of Planning and Community Develop
ment for Alpharetta.
Hello. Everyone!
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Dial Station (1+) charges apply. These charges do not apply to person-to-person, coin, hotel guest, calling card, collect calls, calls charged to another number, or to time and charge calls Rates subject to change Daytime rates are higher Rates do not reflect applicable federal, state and local taxes Applies to Intra-UVTA long distance calls only
Tlds Is Southern Bell!
Isn’t there someone special
you’d like to call;
A 10-MINUTE CALL FROM CUMMING TO:
Athens $2.38
Lawrenceville sl.lß
Gainesville sl.lß
Rome $2.53
Call on weekends or after 11 p.m. and save even more.
Rates listed above are in effect 5-11 p.m., Sunday-Friday.
©Southern Bell
A BELLSOUTH Company
Southern Bell provides services within your calling zone
and a connection to other long distance companies.
Leave credit cards home when holiday shopping
If you haven’t already begun your holi
day shopping, you’ve probably at least
started thinking about it haven’t you?
You may want to start thinking about
how to pay for those holiday purchases
in light of the phasing out of the income
tax interest deduction for consumer
debt, says the Georgia Society of Certi
fied Public Accountants.
This year, only 65 percent of consumer
debt interest (from credit cards, auto
loans, personal loans, etc.) is deductible.
Next year it drops to 40 percent; in 1989,
20 percent; 10 percent in 1990 and finally
eliminated in 1991.
Before you start calculating 65 percent
of the interest on your holiday pur
chases, remember, the 40 percent figure
comes into effect Jan. 1. So if you don’t
pay your credit card bills in full by then,
you’ll only be able to deduct 40 percent of
your interest charges. And the deduction
will be worth less because of generally
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Zenith competes in market with stereo television
By Andrew Collier
The Christian Science Monitor
CHICAGO Last year, Zenith Elec
tronics Corporation won an Emmy.
The award, which was for engineering
not acting was granted by the Na
tional Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences for the development of a new
technology for broadcasting stereo
sound. In an alliance with the Bose Cor
poration, Zenith has put his technology
to use in digital circuitry televisions that
project stunningly clear stereo.
The stereo television is just one among
an array of new products introduced by
the Chicago-based television and elec
tronics company as part of its drive to
stay abreast or even ahead in the
competitive consumer electronics field.
Zenith developed a “flat tension mask”
picture tube designed to reduce glare for
computers, which will show up on televi
sions in 1988. A special-effects video-cas
sette recorder with such digital attrac
tions as a “picture within a picture” for
simultaneous television and VCR view
ing is another Zenith product.
lower tax rates.
How to pay
The best way to pay for holiday gifts is
with cash. Better yet, pay with cash that
you saved over the course of the year
expressly for holiday shopping. Well,
hindsight, is 20-20. Still, if you can afford
to pay with cash, you probably should
even if it means dipping into your sav
ings a little more than you wanted to.
Keep in mind that even after tax con
siderations, an 18 percent credit card in
terest rate in 1987 will cost you about 14
percent if you are in the 35 percent tax
bracket. Your savings would need to
generate at least that 14 percent for it to
make sense to use your credit card.
A home equity loan is a possibility;
after all, the interest on it is generally
still deductible. But think carefully
about whether you want to put your
home up as collateral for holiday gifts.
Because that is, in effect, what you
Zenith, soon to be the last American
company with a United States television
manufacturing plant, may discover that
its technological thrusts are no match
for the dominating kingpins of the televi
sion industry the Japanese. With
plants spread around Asia and the US,
the Japanese companies match their
American competitors in market share
in this country today, at 29 percent; in
1982 Japan had 15 percent, while the US
had 60 percent, according to Television
Digest.
Marshall Field & co., Chicago’s giant
department store, offers consumers a
bewildering variety of television sets,
the large-screen sets range from RCA to
Gold Star to Mitsubishi to Sony. Small
sets include Emerson, Sharp, and To
shiba brand names dominated by the
Japanese.
American companies like Zenith are
trying to confront their Japanese com
petitors with efficient production costs
and a technological edge. But they are
behind in the battle for price. To top it
off, the slowly sinking dollar by all rights
should have driven up the price of televi
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FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS-WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1987
would be doing.
There are a few other drawbacks to
using a home equity loan to pay for holi
day shopping. First is the lead time re
quired to obtain the loan. And there
probably will be closing costs involved.
In addition, the interest deduction on
home equity loans may be limited and
Congress may limit it further in the
future.
The IRA allows you to deduct interest
only on loans up to the original purchase
price of your home less the amount you
owe on your mortgage, plus the cost of
any improvements you have made. For
example: If you purchased your home
for $50,000, made $5,000 worth of im
provements, and owe $35,000, you could
borrow up to $20,000 and deduct the in
terest cost. The interest on any amount
above the $20,000 is only deductible if
used for medical, educational or home
improvement purposes.
Staff Photo Kathryn L. Babb
sion sets, but the Japanese have chosen
to swallow profits rather than increase
prices and lost market share. As Laura
Lederman, an analyst with Duff &
Phelps, a Chicago securities firm, con
cludes about Zenith’s plight, “They’ve
got food products, but in a market where
prices are falling, quality is not good
enough.”
Prices are indeed falling. They are
down more than 4 percent, from an aver
age of $343 per color TV in 1984 to $329
this year, according to the Electronic In
dustries Association. Meanwhile, Ze
nith’s share of the American market has
also dipped from 17.5 percent three
years ago to 14.5 percent now, Television
Digest estimates. Zenith’s 1987 selling
prices for color TVs fell 5 percent below
last year’s.
The combination of lower prices and
smaller market has been deadly for Ze
nith. The company recently announced
that another 100 people would be laid off
as part of a goal of retiring or dismissing
a total of 500 salaried employees in Ze
nith’s North American electronics
group. Two years of losses, and a nine
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If you’ve only recently purchased your
home, you may not have built up that
much equity on the original purchase
price because most of your mortgage
payment goes to pay interest. In short, a
home equity loan may not be the way for
you to pay for holiday shopping.
If you must use credit
If credit is your only alternative, there
are a number of steps you can take to
make it less expensive. First, if you use
a credit card, use a card that has a low
interest rate. Even though other interst
rates are down, many credit cards still
command 18 percent interest or more.
But there are some lower cost cards out
there. And be sure to pay your bill off as
soon as possible. Paying the monthly
minimum is tempting, but expensive.
Another possibility is a loan from a
credit union if you belong to one. Gener
ally, the credit union’s interest rate will
be lower than that of a credit card .
Shopping spree
Buggy-to-buggy traffic lined For
syth County department stores
Friday as shopping for the Christ
mas season got underway in ear
nest. Shoppers got their first taste
of the Christmas rush in filled park
ing lots and check-out lines tnat
stretched into the merchandise
aisles. But these would-be-Santas
at Cumming s Wal-mart braved the
long lines and the rainy weather to
take advantage of the after-
Thanksgiving bargains during the
busiest shopping day of the year
for area merchants.
month 1987 financial statement in the
red, have convinced Zenith that drastic
measures are in order. Consumer prod
ucts, mainly televisions, accounted for
more than 60 percent of the company’s
sales in 1986.
Ironically, Zenith can be credited with
imitating a strategy pioneered by the
Japanese almost 20 years ago: sound
manufacturing practices and invest
ment in new technology. In the 19605, the
Japanese pounced on solid-state and
transistor technology, while American
makers stodgily stuck with color tube
production and tried to beat the competi
tion through cheaper, foreign labor.
“The television manufacturers made
a couple of errors when confronted with
Asian competition,” said Jeffrey A.
Hart, a professor of political science at
Indiana University at Bloomington.
“Their first analysis was that labor costs
were the problem. The second major er
ror they made was to continue with tube
technology on color while moving to
transistors on black and white rather
late.”
PAGE 5A