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Show Thursday, June B Lowe Paved Road to Fortune Wit ii ..uwi;.wi.. By SARAH STIANSEN UPI Business Writer m. OHmmmmmmmmMmimm r - NEW YORK (UPI) For some, the road to fortune is glamorous. For Ed Lowe, the path has been paved with cat box filler. The chairman of Lowe's Inc. doesn't like to discuss his income, but his privately owned companv has sales of $100 million. Lowe has homes in four cibetween South ties, Bend, Ind., the company's headquarters, offices in Chicago and Sarasota, Fla., and of course, Cassopolis, Mich , where Lowe's began and where the company research catkeeps its ers. Today, on an annual basis. Americans spend between $270 million and $300 million tilling their cat boxes. Of that, 12.6 percent is spent on Lowe's Kitty Litter, and another 22.5 percent on Tidy Cat. another of his brands. Among the companies slugging it out for the cat trade are a number of regional firms, private labels and Clorox Co., which manufactures Fresh Step and Litter Green. And. says the king of the cat litter trade, "The cat box filler business is serious busines." "Y J g Ed Lowe 35-c- Litter got his start in Cassopolis. Mich., where Henry Edward inventor The tery. Lowe says he is a proud memof the IWMAO Club "I work my a off." "And everybody who works for me has to belong to the club, too." he said with a laugh. g the indusSince try with the original Kitty Litter, Lowe has witnessed the rise of a slew of competitors pitch - ber their filler in food stores, pet shops and mass merchandising ,J - -- trail-blazin- of Kitty joined his father's sawdust business following a tour with the Navy in World War II. Lowe His lather also sold absorbant clay, used on factory floors. In 1947. when a neighbor asked him for a cat box filler She had she had been piling ashes in her cat box. and was tired of a house lull of sooty paw prints She asked for sand, he sugthe absorbant clay gested ' more to gel r;d of her than anything else.'' he said But the neighbor came back for more, and Lowe figured he was onto something. He approached a local pet store with 10 bags ot day labeled with grease pencil: Kitty Litter. The owner of the pet store doubted that anyone would pay 65 cents for five pounds of clay when sand was so much cheaper. Lowe told him to give it away, and soon, pet store patrons asked for the clay by name ii iLai; tter y successful business, you have .to have a good advertising pro- Next came a traveling salesman period, when Lwe peddled his Kitty Litter at cat shows and to pet stores. Eventually he opened wholesale operations, and by 1954. Kitty Litter cat box filler was available in supermarkets. The rest is history. Today, the company's sales gram." In today's market, that translates to big money. Lowe's promotions cost for this year will approach This July, Lowe's will reintroduce Kitty Litter with a packaging and national advertising. New breakt-a hrough Kitty Litter contains different deodorizing system. New TV ads follow up on an old idea for Kitty Litter, using a Sophisti-ca- t black cat with the distinct Clo-rox- 's markings of a skunk. The kicker is "a cat without Kitty Litter seems like a whole different r, animal." The of course, pictures the cat with and without its skunky stripes.. before-and-afte- "There's some very basic elements for a good business." "And Lowe said. a to have Home Computer Market Still Growing of the PC By HARIHAR KRISHNAN UPI Business Writer - The home DALLAS (UPI) market for sophisticated personal computers grew appreciably in despite a decline in number of PCs sold to households, says Future Computing Inc. of Dallas. InFCI, a unit of McGraw-Hil- l formation Systems Co., says the public perception that the home market for PCs is dead or dying fails to recognize the shift that has occurred in the home computer market in the past two years. "People buying a home computer now are serious, they understand its use and want the machine to do much more than video games," said Hilda Uribe, senior analyst at FCI. FCI has found that the New York metropolitan area has the nation's largest installed base of PCs in households, at least in part because of New York City's lead in d home banking and other 1984 data-base- services. As of Jan. 1, 1985, there were more than 900,000 PCs in the city. Anti-Counterfeiti- at "The penetration the end of 1984 was 12.3 percent of all households in the United States, compared to 8.3 percent in 1983," Uribe said. "That is projected to increase to 15.8 percent in 1985." Uribe said the average investment per household in a personal computer in the fourth quarter of 1983 was $500 but it jumped to $1,060 in the fourth quarter of 1984, indicating consumer preference for the more professional computers. In the fourth quarter of 1983, American households bought 2.2 million computer units but that figure dropped to 1.75 million units in the fourth quarter of 1984. "While the total number of units sold decreased, the picture changes dramatically when you look at the dollar figure of the sales," Uribe said. She said the retail value of the 2.2 million units sold in 1983 was $1.2 billion. "But in 1984 Americans spent $1.8 billion that bought 1.75 million units. "What we are saying is that fewer computers are selling but the end investment in each unit is much higher. In another change, sales of computer have shifted from mass merchandisers to specialty stores, whose numbers continue to grow. "In 1983, the driving force for buying a computer was entertainment and education. Now the single biggest factor is word processing," Uribe said. Consumer use of computers for home banking also is growing, Uribe said. The lead here is clearly held by New York City, where major banks first introduced home banking and where their innovation is helping draw business from outside the city and state, Uribe said. Other major cities with large numbers of home computers were Dallas, Washington, D.C., San Franciso-Oakland-Sa- n Jose, Salt Lake City and Houston. Uribe said the New York area's leading brand was Commodore which accounted for 30 percent of the home market. Other top brands in New York were Texas Instruments, Apple, Atari and Radio Shack. BMX MOTOCROSS Commodore also was the leading brand in Los Angeles, which ranks second nationally in the installed home base for PCs. Commodore held 24 percent of the Los Angeles base. Other leaders were Texas Instruments, Apple. Radio Shack and Atari. The IBM PC was not in the ranking is because of earlier consumer preference for low-en- d brand names. Uribe said. She said this will change in 1985 as more people are expected to buy more sophisticated machines. "In terms of units, there were a lot more low-encomputers than IBM," she said. "We are just preparing a new study about peoples intentions in 1985 and there IBM ranks pretty high. Of those planning to buy PCs in 1985, 32 percent said they will buy Apple and 26 percent said thev will buy IBM." "We believe the home computer market will grow as more services are added such as airline booking, data base searches law reports, Dow Jones, Stock trading and even news," Uribe said. - Trea(UPD sury Secretary James Baker may decide as early as next month how to change U.S. currency in an effort to prevent a predicted counterfeiting explosion. 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DeConsequently, the Treasury VUIUI.eeiLlWVfl'I.eeailU I'lUIC h m Lightweight $139 Value " x-- v one-touc- a m f t V3 20 Inch 16 Inch I "it1 Get m Lightweight BMX ' two-col- WITH AD 12 in. wi th steel boll bearu.gs and training heels Rg $89 d Measures Studied ng $20 mil- terested. Kittv Litter may have been first, but it is Lowe's Tidy Cat brand that is the national bestseller. Depending on whether you measure sales by volume or dollars. Kitty Litter and Fresh Step are interchangeably in the No. 2 spot. five-poun- d million to Part of staying on top of the heap involves revving up the old inproducts to keep consumers brands of filler: The flagship Kitty Litter. Tidy Cat and a variety, $15 lion. come from three different lower-price- 17 fr'l and the business world 1 1 - Page THE HERALD, Provo, Utah, 20. 1985 BUSINESS PRODUCTS 420 NORTH 200 WEST, PROVO P. - ,..-- -.- - ,...l,.,rmiir..i. 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