Returning Australia
HumanKind Water, a bottled water company that touts its social conscience, won the most votes — and the top prize — in Wal-Mart’s "American Idol"-like contest.
As grand prize winner, the Philadelphia-based company will soon have its bottled water sold at up to 3,800 Wal-Mart stores nationwide and on Walmart.com.
"I am thrilled," said T.J. Foltz, president of HumanKind Water, which sources its product from the Poconos Mountains. "We knew people were voting for us like crazy. But we had no idea we’d win."
Scoring a deal with the world’s largest retailer is like hitting the jackpot for a small business vendor. For Foltz, it’s especially significant since his product just launched last October.
Wal-Mart challenge draws wacky products
More important to him, though, is the exposure he hopes this win will bring to the cause behind HumanKind Water.
Foltz said 100% of net profits from its sales will go toward developing clean water wells, water filtration systems and rain catchment systems in underdeveloped communities in Haiti, Africa and Asia.
"Ten thousand kids die every day because of lack of clean drinking water and poor sanitation from contaminated water," he said. "Every one of these deaths can be prevented."
Foltz is a Christian minister who witnessed the need for clean water firsthand during trips overseas. That experience inspired him to develop HumanKind Water and devote himself fully to his company.
"Children dying is everyone’s business," said Foltz, adding that there is nothing religious about HumanKind Water. "In our mission to end this, we’re not reaching out to one faith or another."
Wal-Mart (, Fortune 500), the world’s largest retailer, is announcing the winner at a time when it’s also trying to manage the fallout from allegations that it bribed its way to dominance of Mexico’s retail industry.
Wal-Mart tries to recover from Mexico allegations
The retailer launched its "Get on the Shelf" competition January 18, giving three small businesses, entrepreneurs or inventors a first-ever chance at winning virtual shelf space through Walmart payday loans online.com. The grand prize winner also gets a spot on Wal-Mart store shelves nationwide.
More than 4,000 contestants submitted video entries of their product; the retailer let the public vote on their favorites.
The contest drew more than 1 million votes in total, said Wal-Mart spokesman Ravi Jariwala. HumanKind Water captured the highest number of votes, followed by PlateTopper and SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit.
PlateTopper is a 100% BPA-free plastic cover that transforms plates into airtight food storage containers. SnapIt is a patented screw kit designed to fix sunglasses and eyeglasses in 30 seconds. These two products will sell on Walmart.com, but not in stores.
All three winning products will have an online banner touting them as the contest winners, said Jariwala. HumanKind will also get a special display in Wal-Mart stores.
Wal-Mart is assessing the three winners’ marketing and production capabilities, he added, and will give the three winners help ramping up if they need it.
Holding a public contest to find a vendor is an unusual departure for Wal-Mart.
The discounter is notoriously strict in selecting products. Prospective suppliers meet with Wal-Mart’s in-house buyers at the Bentonville, Ark., headquarters in small rooms lining a bluish-gray corridor unofficially referred to as "vendor row."
There, they get an hour tops to pitch their products and convince Wal-Mart buyers why they should stock them.
But for vendors of HumanKind Water, PlateTopper and the SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit, all this is unnecessary.
PlateTopper will begin selling on Walmart.com on May 3, while SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit will start selling online in the near future. HumanKind Water will launch on Walmart.com and in its stores nationwide soon after, the store said.
Wal-Mart hasn’t made any decisions yet whether to repeat the contest in the future, Jariwala said.
"Our focus at this point is on evaluating the success of this contest," he said.
Stocks are closing slightly higher as investors weigh news of higher corporate profit against disappointing economic news.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 24 points to 13,228 at the close Friday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 edged up three points to 1,403. The Nasdaq composite rose 19 points to 3,069.
Amazon jumped 16 percent after the online retailer reported a big increase in shipments.
The government reported U.S. economy grew at annual rate of 2.2 percent, below the 2.5 percent expected.
European stock markets rose as investors shrugged off a second downgrade this year by S&P of Spain’s debt. Spain also reported its unemployment rate rose to nearly 25 percent, its highest in 18 years.
Spain’s IBEX rose 1.7 percent, France’s CAC-40 1.1 percent and Germany’s DAX 0.9 percent.
Signed contracts to buy U.S. homes rose more than forecast in March as low interest rates drew buyers back into the market.
The index of pending home purchases rose 4.1 percent to 101.4, the highest level since April 2010, after a 0.4 percent gain in February that was revised from a previously estimated 0.5 percent drop, the National Association of Realtors reported today in Washington. The median forecast of 43 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a 1 percent rise in the measure, which tracks contracts on previously owned homes.
An improved labor market and mortgage rates near historic lows are helping to stabilize housing. At the same time, the industry remains the economy
TORONTO
A fairly rosy manufacturing survey in the U.S. helped shore up markets Monday following a volatile day when conflicting figures from around the world raised questions over the state of the global economic recovery.
At certain times of the day, the more optimistic investor found reasons to be hopeful _ while, at other times, the pessimist had the upper hand.
The conflicting signals were particularly evident in China. One manufacturing survey eased fears over the scale of the slowdown in the world’s second largest economy while another indicated that the downturn was getting worse.
An equivalent report about the state of the sector in Europe reinforced fears over a recession in the 17-country eurozone. Figures showing that unemployment in the 17 countries that use the euro rose to 10.8 percent in February, its highest level since the euro was launched in 1999, reinforced recession concerns.
However, a better-than-expected monthly Institute for Supply Management survey about the manufacturing sector in the U.S. helped lift markets into the Wall Street session. The institute’s main index for March rose to 53.4 in March, up from 52.4 in the previous month and just ahead of expectations for a more modest increase to 53.0.
“The ISM data largely fits with the global picture that is fairly flat, with some loss of any recovery momentum in the euro area,” said Alan Ruskin, an analyst at Deutsche Bank.
In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 1.85 percent at 5,874 while Germany’s DAX rose 1.5 percent to 7,056. The CAC-40 in France was 1.1 percent higher at 3,462. The euro though remained under pressure, trading 0.27 percent lower at $1.3325.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.5 percent at 13,279 while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index was 0.83 percent lower at 1,420.
In the first quarter of the year, stock markets around the world posted solid gains as Europe’s debt crisis seemingly eased following a big liquidity injection from the European Central Bank and a raft of forecast-busting U.S. economic figures.
However, Kathleen Brooks, research director at Forex.com, said stocks will face bigger headwinds in the second quarter as investors concentrate on growth and the future direction of central bank policy.
“While stocks won’t fall precipitously, expect some pretty big pullbacks especially in European markets,” said Brooks.
Economic indicators around the world will be the primary point of interest in the markets this week. The U.S. will increasingly attract attention in the run-up to Friday’s nonfarm payrolls figures for March.
Earlier in Asia, stocks generally edged higher.
Though markets in mainland China were closed for a public holiday, the main indexes elsewhere started the second quarter positively. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index gained 0.3 percent to close at 10,109.87 despite businesses remaining pessimistic in the central bank’s latest quarterly “tankan” survey. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.2 percent to 20,522.26.
Oil prices started the day tracking European stocks lower, but the benchmark New York rate rose $1.43 later on in the day to $104.35 a barrel.
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Pamela Sampson in Bangkok contributed to this report.
European governments moved to bolster their rescue funds, seeking to shield Spain and Italy from the fallout of the debt crisis without alienating bailout- weary voters in wealthy countries.
Finance ministers neared an agreement to run the temporary and permanent funds in parallel until mid-2013, potentially raising the upper limit on emergency lending to 940 billion euros ($1.3 trillion). Amounts immediately available would range between 340 billion euros and 640 billion euros.
Pakistan is better known for bombs than bombshells, militant compounds than opulent estates. A few enterprising Pakistanis hope to alter that perception with the launch of a local version of the well-known celebrity magazine Hello!
They plan to profile Pakistan’s rich and famous: the dashing cricket players, voluptuous Bollywood stars and powerful politicians who dominate conversation in the country’s ritziest private clubs and lowliest tea stalls. They also hope to discover musicians, fashion designers and other new talents who have yet to become household names.
“The side of Pakistan that is projected time and time again is negative,” said Zahraa Saifullah, CEO of Hello! Pakistan. “There is a glamorous side of Pakistan, and we want to tap into that.”
But celebrating the lives of Pakistan’s most prosperous citizens is not without its critics in a country where much of the population lives in poverty. Advertising one’s prosperity could be risky as well since kidnappings for ransom are on the rise and attracting attention from Islamist militants can mean death.
Wajahat Khan, a consulting editor at Hello! Pakistan, said they were cognizant of the sensitivity of publishing a glamour magazine in a conservative Muslim country where many people are struggling and planned to be “socially responsible and culturally aware.”
“We are trying to be happy in a war zone,” Khan said Saturday at a news conference with Saifullah and other members of the magazine’s editorial staff. “We are trying to celebrate what is still alive in a difficult country.”
Khan said they would do everything they could to protect the security of the people they profile, but he wasn’t overly concerned.
“I don’t think terrorist networks are going to be reading Hello! anytime soon,” he said.
Pakistan already has a series of local publications that chronicle the lives of the wellheeled in major cities like Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, especially as they hop between lavish parties guaranteed payday loans. But the producers of Hello! Pakistan hope the magazine’s international brand and greater depth will attract followers.
Hello! was launched in 1988 by the publisher of Spain’s Hola! magazine and is now published in 150 countries. It’s well-known for its extensive coverage of Britain’s royal family and once paid $14 million in a joint deal with People magazine for exclusive pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s newborn twins.
The market for English-language publications in Pakistan is fairly small. Most monthly and weekly magazines sell no more than 3,000 copies, said Khan, the consulting editor. But they hope to tap into the large Pakistani expatriate markets in the United Kingdom and the Middle East as well.
Hello! Pakistan will be published once a month and will cost about $5.50, twice as much as what many poor Pakistanis earn in a day. The first issue will be published in mid-April and will focus on the Pakistani fashion scene.
Saifullah, who grew up watching her mother and grandmother read Hello! as she hopped between London and Karachi, said it took her two years to convince the magazine to publish a local version in Pakistan.
“They were concerned about whether Pakistan was ready for a magazine like this,” she said.
But Saifullah thinks the timing is perfect to showcase Pakistan’s too often hidden treasures, citing Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who recently became the first Pakistani filmmaker to win an Oscar for a documentary about the plight of female victims of acid attacks in the country.
“We want to tap into the aesthetically beautiful, the athletic, the fashionable,” said Saifullah. “There is so much going on on a daily basis that nobody ever covers. It’s totally unexplored.”
The good news is Greece won
A group of ground staff at Frankfurt airport is beginning a new three-day strike in a long-running pay dispute.
The GdF union called the strike from 9 p.m. Sunday (2000 GMT; 3 p.m. EST) until 5 a.m. Thursday (0400 GMT; 11 p.m. EST Wednesday) after the latest talks collapsed. It follows a three-day strike last week at Europe’s third-busiest airport.
Airport operator Fraport says it kept more than 80 percent of flights running last week and expects to do so this time, too. Still, German news agency dapd reported that Lufthansa canceled some 140 flights for Monday.
Fraport has criticized GdF demands for double-digit wage increases for around 200 workers who oversee operations on the tarmac. The union says it just wants Frankfurt salaries brought into line with other airports.
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