Mitsubishi Promises More Opportunities
Mitsubishi Motors Sales of America, which last week signed an agreement to end a consumer boycott by the National Organization for Women and the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, is poised to become the poster child for equal opportunity in automobile retailing.
Under terms of the agreement that ended a six-month boycott, the Cypress-based importer and distributor of Mitsubishi cars and trucks said it would make sure that 15% of its dealerships were owned by women or ethnic minorities within five years.
“If they reach that goal, it would catapult them to the top and set standards that other domestic and import auto manufacturers should feel it essential to match,” said Sheila Vaden-Williams, executive director of the National Assn. of Minority Automobile Dealers.
Mitsubishi Motor Sales counted 9% of its dealers as women or minorities before the boycott began last July--already the best record among all foreign car companies and the second-best overall behind Ford Motor Co. It was picked as the first target in an effort to force the auto companies to offer more opportunities for minorities, Vaden-Williams acknowledged, because its Michigan-based sister company, Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing was in the limelight as the defendant in a massive sexual harassment lawsuit by the federal government.
The company soon will announce that it’s hiring two new senior vice presidents, both African Americans lured away from Detroit auto makers. One will be stationed in Orange County to help oversee Mitsubishi’s dealer development program. The importer plans to open only 45 new dealerships in the next five years, said Kevin Ormes, vice president of marketing. So to meet the 15% goal, 34 of them will have to be owned by women or ethnic minorities.
Mitsubishi plans to help minorities overcome the huge financial obstacles involved in becoming dealers. The company will buy, build or lease dealership facilities and then re-lease them to the new dealers. The dealers will have options to buy the facilities but won’t be burdened with coming up with the cash upfront.
Irvine Trade Specialist Makes Asian Picks Hong Kong becomes part of China in the middle of 1997, South Korea begins the year with a massive labor strike, and throughout the coming 12 months a host of problems, conflicts and opportunities will rise and fall in Asia.
So what’s an Orange County company with an eye on the Asian marketplace supposed to do this year? Look for profitable enterprises in China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan and tread carefully if entering markets in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea or Thailand, where the economies and political situations are dicier, says foreign trade finance specialist Richard Torre.
Torre, founder of Irvine-based Global Capital Markets Inc., is back from a monthlong swing through 10 Asian nations and reports that after a pretty depressing 1996, in which several years of double-digit economic growth slammed to a halt, things are looking up again.
Torre remains convinced that the reunification of Hong Kong with China won’t substantially alter the city’s status as a freewheeling economic power. The Communist regime in China needs Hong Kong as its conduit to the West.
The best Hong Kong business opportunities, he said, are in the shipping industries. Particularly in demand is software, hardware and management expertise that can help Hong Kong-based shippers handle the increasingly complex job of moving freight throughout the world by sea and air. As for China itself, Torre believes there are opportunities for companies that can help untangle the sprawling country’s distribution network and assist domestic industries in cleaning up air and water pollution.
Art Imitates High Drama of Consolidations The sages say that Raytheon Co.’s agreement to buy Hughes Electronics Corp. marks the end of the bloodletting in Southern California’s defense and aerospace industries. That may be, but the process has been painful for tens of thousands of workers who have lost jobs in previous consolidations and cutbacks.
Still, Orange County and its scores of dispossessed defense workers (those with the price of a ticket, anyhow) get a chance to laugh at the misery. A new offbeat comedy, based on the defense crunch, premiered this week at the South Coast Repertory’s Second Stage theater.
The play, “Best and Final Offer,” explores the angst of four middle-aged white males as they imagine the future if their defense-related jobs are eliminated. One of the laugh lines: “Will the last dinosaur in the room please turn out the lights.”
And some say that business and the arts don’t mix!
Westamerica Graphics Celebrates a New Home A moving tale: Westamerica Graphics Corp., a privately owned commercial printing business, celebrates its 20th year in Orange County next month with the grand opening of its new 34,000-square-foot headquarters in Foothill Ranch. Company President Doug Grant says the business, which grossed nearly $8 million in sales last year and has 60 employees, moved out of its 18,500-square-foot quarters in Irvine.
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John O’Dell covers major Orange County corporations and manufacturing for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5831 and at [email protected].
