He's a brilliant financial engineer. His record is always the same: cut costs, sell assets. That's terrific, only that's no way to run a retail business.

They are a small brand. They are not a monster brand. The name of the game for them is to build brand awareness and market share.

What is behind everything that Luxottica has done worldwide is, they get so powerful they can fry the suppliers' brains out. If you're an independent seller of eyewear, you have a problem. You have to live on service and relationships and fashion and all of that, but it's very difficult to compete with somebody who is buying the same product for less.

SARS has not stopped factories from rolling out products in China, ... The only effect it's had on U.S. businesses is that it has led to fewer visits from buyers to the region. So there have been less face-to-face meetings between buyers and suppliers, but companies have gotten around that by teleconferencing.

Is Wal-Mart going after the Hispanic and African-American consumers? Absolutely. They're a significant percentage of Wal-Mart shoppers,

Wal-Mart has identified a strategy of urban expansion, and they're not going to walk away from it, ... They know that operating in an urban market is different from the suburbs and I'm sure they were already aware of things like zoning laws. Did they really need to put up a fight in Inglewood? No. What they did here is lay down the marker. Wal-Mart is saying that they've identified a new market and they're going to move it and attack.