NR Market Watch

The first Internet transmission was the first two letters of the word “login” but then the system crashed. That was 40 years ago today and the inventor, surprise, was not Al Gore, but a guy from UCLA named Leonard Kleinrock. Here is the interesting story from PC World about the invention that in a very short period of time has dramatically changed our lives.

Douglas County Business Workshop Calendar—November 1, 2009

by Debbie Cooley, UCC Small Business Development Center Assistant, 440-4669 or debbie.cooley@umpqua.edu. Pre-registration is required.

Workshop Title:            Mission Possible-Job Search

Date:                              Nov. 2-5.  Stop by the office to be scheduled.

Time:                             8-10 am Mon.-Wed.; 3-5 pm Thurs

Cost:                              FREE

Location:                        UT&E, 760 NW Hill Ave., Roseburg

Sponsoring agency:       Umpqua Training & Employment

Contact Phone #:           672-7761

Workshop Title:            Excel Charts & Graphs  #26918

Date:                              Mon., Nov. 2

Time:                             Noon-2pm

Cost:                              $27

Location:                        UCC Workforce Training (more…)

From Stacey Crowe

You might have heard or read many different times and dates for the Parade.  It  will be at 4:00 on Saturday!!!  Roseburg Town Center bought some candy to give out that evening.  If you know of some volunteers who would like to help hand out candy have them bring an empty to bag to the Roseburg Town Center office around 3:45 on Saturday and we will fill up your bag.

I think we made a good decision to have this on Saturday and not Friday because there isn’t any school on Friday.

Happy Halloween!!

Stacey

The Partnership with the help of Business Oregon will be organizing an International Trade Workshop.  The focus of the workshop will be International Marketing for your Business.  All area businesses who want to learn more about international trade are welcome.  Dana Shannon, Global Trade Specialist, Business Oregon will be the speaker.

This workshop will be held on December 3, 2009, at 7:00 am at Elmer’s Restaurant, Vineyard Room.  No host breakfast.

For more information please call:

Helga Conrad

The Partnership (Umpqua Economic Development for Douglas County)

541-464-3527

Auto Remarketing expects that the bullish wholesale market will give way to lower prices at both the wholesale and retail levels. The article suggests the post cash for clunkers market has seen a marked drop in used car demand and aging inventories. Late model prices are reportedly down $1,000 from their wholesale value peak.

Download NRF’s Holiday Survival Kit
Watch Ellen Davis discuss NRF’s holiday forecast on CNBC
Listen to a media briefing to learn what to expect this year

Washington, October 6, 2009 — The National Retail Federation today released its 2009 holiday forecast, projecting holiday retail industry sales to decline one percent this year to $437.6 billion.* While this number falls significantly below the ten-year average of 3.39 percent holiday season growth, the decline is not expected to be as dramatic as last year’s 3.4 percent drop in holiday retail sales nor as severe as the 3.0 percent decline in annual retail industry sales expected for all of 2009.**

“As the global economy continues to recover from the worst economic crisis most retailers have ever seen, Americans will focus primarily on practical gifts and shop on a budget this holiday season,” said NRF Chief Economist Rosalind Wells.

Though some hopeful signs of a recovery have begun to emerge, like better-than-expected sales in August and momentum in the stock market, continued consumer (more…)

From DemoMemo:

The Oregonian, like most metro newspapers, has seen better days and  new publisher Chris Anderson has plenty of issues facing him in his new job. The Oregonian has been one of the nation’s premier newspapers, won several Pulitzer prizes, and has many exceptional journalists and business people in its employ.

The economic downturn and the classified business lost to the Internet is evident in the reduced number of pages of the publication.

I met Chris Anderson at an Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association meeting a few years ago when he was publishing the Orange County Register. I was a bit surprised to see the publisher of such a large out-of-state newspaper speaking to our group until I learned of his many years in Oregon (graduated Albany HS, Oregon State University, and worked at the Albany newspaper).

He is a man of solid accomplishment working for a newspaper which does very good work. Not good enough for the nay-saying commentators on the Oregonians website, however.

I wish him great success. Our state, like many others, will lose much more than a few newspaper jobs if our largest newspapers falter or fail.

I recently commented on the relative good health of community newspapers and there is an article from one of our newspaper trade associations that echoes that news for most newspapers of about 15,000 circulation, though we are a bit larger than that.

The story is much tougher for some of the biggest newspapers in the country. According to the largest newspaper circulation auditing company the San Francisco Chronicle took the largest hit this past year with a circulation drop of 26%; The Miami Herald was next with a decline of 23%. Other newspapers suffering major losses are in Newark, NJ, Boston, Houston and Los Angeles.

That circulation will never come back. Most, if not all, of these newspapers will be something else, or a memory, in the not too distant fuutre.