Cereal-brand vitamins to hit shelves
Watch out, Centrum. The Breakfast of Champions also aims to be the vitamin of champions.
General Mills today will announce plans to build vitamin brands around two of its most familiar, health-oriented cereals: Wheaties and Total.
Wheaties Multivitamins and Total Multivitamins, made by Leiner Health Products, are going on store shelves nationwide this week. The 50-count bottles retail for $5.99. Each brand also will offer a 30-count box of “daily performance vitamin packs,” a multivitamin pill plus herbal and other supplements, at $13.99.
The move by the big brands is expected to shake up the nation’s $6.6 billion dietary supplement industry – and quickly result in copycats.
“It will certainly put some fear into the hearts of other vitamin makers,” says Patrick Rea, research director at Nutrition Business Journal, a trade publication.
Kootenai County job market strong
A record number of job openings in Kootenai County are posted at the Idaho Department of Commerce and Labor’s employment office.
The office has more than 500 job listings posted by local employers. Normally, the number of job openings drops below 200 in early March, said Marla Hobbs-Hill, employment services supervisor.
Positions range from landscape laborers, which pay up to $10 per hour, to professional positions with salaries in the $50,000 range.
Hobbs-Hill credits the strengthening local economy to the upswing in job listings. Kootenai County’s unemployment rate was 6.1 percent in December.
Costco earnings rise 35 percent
Costco Wholesale Corp. said Wednesday that second-quarter earnings rose 35 percent, due in part to a big tax benefit, but shares fell after the company’s results failed to meet Wall Street expectations.
The members-only warehouse-club retailer said that income for the 12 weeks ended Feb. 13 rose to $305.5 million, or 62 cents a share, from $226.8 million, or 48 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter.
The Issaquah-based retailer’s fiscal second quarter included a tax benefit of $52.1 million from the settlement of a dispute over the correct tax amount for operations in Canada. The company said the favorable settlement is good through 2006, after which it will be renegotiated.