Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 24, 1993 TAG: 9312290004
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Sandra Brown Kelly
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Parents, still being parents, now have inspired a rewrite of such classic fairy tales as ``Little Red Riding Hood,'' ``The Three Little Pigs'' and ``Chicken Little.''
In Western Publishing Co.'s Alternative Little Golden Sound Story versions of the tales, Grandma doesn't get eaten by the wolf. Instead, she hides in a closet and bursts out to scare the wolf away. She's wearing a ghost costume she has sewn from linens in the closet.
The company said the rewrites were inspired by parents who don't want to expose their children to violence in the tales, yet who found the ``sound'' books popular with younger children. The books have a panel of characters' pictures that if pushed on emit the character's moans or growls.
The revised versions of the classic tales could create other problems, though. Won't children wonder why Grandma keeps her sewing machine in the closet?
And who said every Grandma can sew? Will those who can't get eaten?
\ Martha Cox is closing the Martha's women's apparel shop she has operated in downtown Roanoke for a decade. She'll keep open the second shop she started in 1989, at Townside Festival shopping center on Franklin Road.
Cox says she wants more time to do things such as square dancing - a hobby she took up in 1989.
Regular customers have seen evidence of Cox's dancing interest in the swirling skirts and western accessories that showed up in greater volume in her stores.
Cox said she had considered closing for several months. She said another deciding factor, along with the need for more personal time, was the need to do renovation at the downtown Kirk Avenue site.
She expects to finish liquidating the store's merchandise by early next year. Just in time, considering she has begun shag dancing lessons.
\ J.C. Penney Co. Inc. this month launched a $60 million advertising campaign on the theme that its department stores are the `'right place'' for value and merchandise.
Phil Boggs, who manages Penney at Tanglewood Mall, said he already knew Penney's prowess as a retailer and had the stats to prove it.
Based on blind interviews - meaning people didn't know which company was conducting the survey - at Tanglewood and Valley View malls, consumer awareness of Penney as a source of good value and fashion doubled or more in recent years.
In 1989, 20 percent to 25 percent of the people interviewed in the malls' common areas identified Penney stores as a source for brand name fashionable merchandise at value prices. In a 1993 survey, the percentages were in the 40 percent and 50 percent ranges.
The survey also indicated how the merchant did against competitors, but Boggs said he didn't want to ``get into best or worst.
``Sometimes we won against competition and sometimes they beat the pants off us,'' he said.
\ Levi Strauss & Co. wants to sell jeans as well as make them. The company has teamed up with Designs Inc., a Massachusetts retailer, to open 35 to 50 jeans stores in the Northeast within the next five years.
Through a special arrangement with Levi's, Designs already owns and manages six Original Levi's stores - in addition to 64 mall-based stores operating under the Designs name, 45 Levi's Outlet stores and two Dockers Shop stores.
The company said the Original Levi's stores won't ``replace the retail distribution system in place,'' a statement apparently designed to reassure department stores and other merchants that sell Levi products.
The company already operates six such stores in Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, but purely for testing new merchandise and experimenting with display concepts. The new stores will be first-line retail shops designed to compete with stores such as Gap.
by CNB