LINCOLN Mercury "Superstar" Used Cars TOYOTA Ma 71Da 41111 DISC page 63 HYUrlDfli *SUZUKI. Ask anyone who owns one.- "EQUITY TRADE" International Net Sales WE PAY OFF YOUR TRADE REGARDLESS OF HOW MUCH YOU OWE! AUTOMOTIVE GROUP International Represents a Growing Percentage of Handleman's Total Business (In millions) WE GUARANTEE... 120 100 80 A F-A-R-R BETTER DEAL! 60 40 "The Bigger We Get... The Better Deals You Get!" THE SUPERS-TAR CALL 1-800-MEL-FARR DEALER 24 Hour Information Center 20 FY 95 Est. in 1975 Our CD'S FeA5STIAR ■ ■ Don't play Music, but could be Music to your Ears 11....._ ‘111 ____ BANK Member F.D.I.C. One Year Certificate 5.87% A P Y * Phone number: (248)-338-7700 or (248)-352-7700 2600 Telegraph Rd.•Bloomfield Hills•MI 48302 This is a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insured account (FDIC). A minimum opening deposit and balance of $500.00 is required to obtained the stated Annual Percentage Yield. `Annual percentage yield when compounded quarterly. Rate is accurate as of 8/15/97. Penalty for early withdrawal from certificate accounts may be assessed. NOW TAKING ORDERS ON 1998 MODELS! FOR YOUR BEST PRICE AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICE Call MIKE SCHLUSSEL TAMAROFF DODGE 24625 West 12 Mile (Just west of Telegraph) • Southfield, MI DIRECT: (248) 354-6600 223-8516 Get Results... Advertise in our new Entertainment Section! Call The Sales Department (810) 354-7123 Ext. 209 THE JEWISH NEWS FY 96 FY 97 at a 100 percent exchange that may have slowed down or didn't perform as we expected." To prevent those surprises, the Handleman Company last year put into effect a new pro- gram that will look at what sold by title in an individual store in the past. With that program, they can actually do weighted av- erages of titles and can tell a re- tailer that, for example, a new country and western release will be 50 percent like the last Garth Brooks, 30 percent like the last by another name artist, and 20 percent of the category as a whole. That enables Handleman to forecast sales for the individ- ual store and even ship their re- quired supply for any chosen number of weeks. Mr. Handleman is all too aware that the market for the company's product lines has shrunk as Wal-Mart, Target and Kmart eliminated other mass market retailers. Montgomery Ward, a company that Handle- man has done business with for almost 50 years, is in bankrupt- cy. And F.W. Woolworth's 400 stores are closing their doors. The need for the Handleman Company to diversify is made clear in the company's annual re- port. For the last three years, just two customers, Kmart and Wal-Mart, have accounted for an average of 65 percent of the com- pany's sales. But the changing demands of the retail world haven't left the Handleman Company unpre- pared. "Another major initiative we put in place in the last three years is automated distribution centers (ADC)," said Strome. "We have put two in place, start- ing with one in Sparks, Nev., a 325,000-square-foot facility (to service the Western states) which we opened in 1994. "We took three existing branches, all of which were car- rying inventory, all doing re- ordering and shipping, and merged them into this one large facility. Then we automated the picking, packing, and pricing au- thorizations." From the time an individual puts an item into a slot (on a ma- chine which Strome compares to an 80-foot-long, upside-down Pez 1995 1996 1997 dispenser, with a belt running through the middle), an order is transferred from the computer to the machine, and it actually becomes store specific. "You know which store it be- longs to, because it compares what's on the belt to what's on the order, and if it matches, prints a ticket and puts it on the product. Then it reads the tick- et on the product, plus the bar code on the product, to verify that they're the same and still in order. "If the store requires it to be in a keeper, it will automatical- ly put it in one, and then present it to our person to put it in a box," said Strome. Developed in Austria, the sys- tem is called A-Frame Tech- nology and the Handleman Company was the first to use it on a single-file basis. The six lines in Sparks move four units per second, generating 24 units per second through the auto- mated process. In Indianapolis, site of the sec- ond ADC, the Handleman Com- pany merged six facilities into a new 385,000-square-foot facility in 1996. "We left the sales offices out there to continue to manage the field sales, but took all the inventory out of the branches, which allowed us to reduce our inventories by about $90 million over the last two years," said Strome. It reduced operating costs significantly. Mr. Handleman said the corn- pany is now looking at the East Coast where they have three ex- isting facilities. The company's second division is Handleman International, "and that services four countries today," said Strome. Handleman has been in Canada since 1962, and followed Kmart and Wal- Mart into Mexico in 1994. In Mexico, Handleman's mar- ket share of the retail music busi- ness is 20 percent, a significant amount for what was essential- ly a start-up company three years ago. By some published es- timates, Handleman is already the largest marketer of music and video in Mexico. "In 1995, we followed Wal- Mart into Brazil and Argentina," DISC page 66