Fletcher Jones Motorcars has Starbucks. Newport Lexus will have Wolfgang Puck.
“Many of the (Puck) items will be provided free of charge for our guests,” said A.J. D’Amato, vice president and general manager of Newport Lexus, which broke ground earlier this month.
Newport Lexus, being developed by Wilson Automotive Group, is set to open next year.
The dealership, going up across the way from swanky Mercedes dealer Fletcher Jones, expects customers to wait around to have their cars serviced. Hence the trappings: marble floors, leather chairs, plasma TVs.
That’s different from Tustin Lexus, Wilson’s other Lexus dealership. There, 125 cars a day are loaned to customers who don’t want to wait around while their cars are worked on.
D’Amato said Newport Lexus will be catering to a market with high expectations, thanks in part to Fletcher’s pampering.
“They’re used to getting what they want, when they want it and what they want to pay for it,” he said.
Newport Lexus plans to spend more time training workers, D’Amato said. He and other executives recently spent four days at Carlsbad’s Four Seasons Resort Aviara studying the way the five-star hotel handles “crunch time,” when everyone is leaving and coming at the same time.
“They choreograph it quite well,” D’Amato said. “It’s all hands on deck.”
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Pinctada maxima pearls: among the priciest |
Everyone pitches in during busy times at the resort, he said. Even gardeners might be parking cars.
“We have a similar situation in a car dealership,” he said.
From about 8 a.m. to 9:45 a.m., lots of people are dropping off their cars for service.
During their four-day training, the Newport Lexus folks also studied Starbucks Coffee Co., Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. and Apple Computer Inc., he said.
The dealership plans to open with about 125 workers and expects to ramp up to about 250 shortly thereafter.
Gas Impact
High gas prices are starting to weigh on auto purchases, according to an August survey by Irvine’s Kelley Blue Book and Harris Interactive Surveys. About 59% of shoppers say that the increased gas prices have changed their minds about gas guzzlers. About 70% said they’d consider a hybrid.
Pearl of a Store
Erica Sueng Lim and husband Eric Rautman hope to follow their pearl jewelry business to Orange County.
The couple recently opened their first store, Anandia, next to Newport Auto Center in the Starbucks plaza on Pacific Coast Highway.
Ananda means joy in Sanskrit, an ancient language still spoken in India.
Lim went to school at the University of California, Irvine, where she majored in economics.
“We liked the area a lot,” she said.
Now Lim and Rautman are looking for a home in OC.
The couple also runs a family wholesale business in Los Angeles. Her parents are from Cambodia, where they owned a gem mine.
Anandia imports pearls from Tahiti, Australia and Japan.
“We do extensive travel,” said Lim, the company’s buyer.
Pearls are valued according to size and quality, according to Lim. The average strand of Tahitian pearls cost $3,000 to $4,000, she said. The normal white cultured pearls from Japan go for $300 to $400 a strand.
These days, the oysters that make pearls live in hatcheries. Life isn’t fun for oysters or oyster farmers, thanks to ocean pollution, Lim said.
“The farmers are facing a hard time,” she said.
Some of the most expensive pearls come from pinctada maxima oysters from Australia.
“They’re huge,” she said, “bigger than my hand spread out.”
Triangle Opposite
Triangle Square may be lacking for tenants. But across the street, the Costa Mesa Courtyards is filling up.
Two hip discount fashion retailers have opened, Styles for Less and Crossroads, and an 11,000-square-foot Beverages & More recently opened. Los Angeles-based Festival Cos. owns the center, which also includes a Maytag Store, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and 24 Hour Fitness.
Katrina Fallout
Hurricane Katrina could hurt profits of retailers such as Anaheim’s Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., according to Stacy Pak, analyst with Prudential Equity Group. Retailers are set to see a 15% temporary increase in freight costs, Pak said.
PacSun affirmed its third-quarter guidance last week.
More Florida for QuikDrop
Costa Mesa-based QuikDrop Inter-national said it is opening stores in several Florida cities.
QuikDrop already has 14 stores in Florida. QuikDrop sells items for customers on eBay.
QuikDrop competes with several other eBay auction stores, such as AuctionDrop Inc. in Fremont and iSold It LLC in Pasadena.
