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Vf Corporation Business Information, Profile, and History
105 Corporate Center Boulevard
Greensboro, North Carolina 27408-3194
VF is the global leader in creating powerful brands of apparel. The consumer is the focus of everything we do.
We are the best at bringing people comfort and quality in our brands. We know our consumers, where they are and where they're headed. We are dedicated to our retail partners. We believe in treating our associates, our colleagues and all those we serve in the course of doing business with the highest levels of honesty, integrity, consideration and respect.
Our world-class people are the source of our success. As a company, we bring excellence in operations and the latest technology to the art of apparel. We bring to market the right products at the right time. Working together, we have a bright future because we create superior products and market them with exceptional skill.
All these things mean success--for our associates, our retailers, our shareholders, our communities, and the millions of people who feel good in our brands.
These are the things that make us great. These are the things that make us VF.
History of Vf Corporation
VF Corporation is one of the world's largest publicly owned fashion apparel manufacturers, designing and producing a diverse array of clothing products for both the U.S. and international markets. The company owns an array of well-known brands in several categories that are sold through a variety of retail sales channels, including department, specialty, mass-merchant, and discount stores. VF is the leading maker of jeans in the United States, holding about one-quarter of the market with such brands as Wrangler, Lee, Rustler, and Riders. Approximately half of the company's revenues come from the sale of jeanswear. Intimate apparel, which includes the Vanity Fair, Lily of France, Vassarette, and Bestform brands, generates about 16 percent of sales. Another 10 percent comes from marketing occupational apparel under the Red Kap, Penn State Textile, and Bulwark brands. VF also sells children's playwear under the Healthtex and Lee brands, North Face outdoor apparel and equipment, and JanSport and Eastpak daypacks and bookbags. The company's knitwear apparel business designs, manufactures, and markets imprinted sports clothing under licenses from Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, major universities and colleges, and top NASCAR drivers. Other operations include a chain of about 50 VF retail outlet stores located across the United States, selling a wide range of company products. More than 80 percent of company revenues are derived domestically; the remainder primarily originates in Europe, with South America and Asia contributing small portions of overall sales.
The company's beginnings can be traced to the year 1899, when eight men formed the Reading Glove and Mitten Manufacturing Company in Reading, Pennsylvania, and began producing and selling knitted and silk gloves. Of the founders, two men had previous experience in the garment industry as hosiery manufacturing executives, while a third, John Barbey, was a brewer and banker and controlled the company's financial operations. After 12 years of slow growth, Barbey purchased his partners' interests in the company in 1911. The following year, Barbey's son John Edward (known as J.E.) joined the firm as vice-president, and in 1913 the company's name was changed to Schuylkill Silk Mills.
In 1914 the company expanded into the manufacture of silk lingerie, and after three years of successful sales, the Barbeys decided to conduct a contest to find a brand name for their lingerie line. The winner received a $25 prize for the name "Vanity Fair." With hopes of establishing a national reputation for the company's merchandise, the Barbeys launched an extensive advertising campaign that emphasized the superior quality and style of Vanity Fair lingerie. This direct-to-the-consumer approach was considered innovative in that time period, because most other lingerie was of mediocre quality and was sold without brand names primarily through jobbers. The Barbeys' campaign was successful, and as the Vanity Fair brand name became more well known, the company once again changed its name to Vanity Fair Silk Mills, Inc. in 1919.
By the early 1920s, the rising success of the lingerie product line prompted Vanity Fair to discontinue its glove manufacturing operation and devote itself exclusively to the business of making lingerie. J.E. Barbey was named general manager of the company in 1931 in addition to his position as vice-president. Union organizing activities in the Reading area in the 1930s prompted Vanity Fair to open a new factory in 1937 in Monroeville, Alabama, in the union-unfriendly South. J.E. Barbey was known for his antiunion views and did not want to run a unionized factory. The Reading plant remained in operation though not unionized, but after a new wave of organizing actions arose following the end of World War II and two unsuccessful attempts were made to unionize the plant, it was closed for good in 1948.
Innovation and Expansion in the Mid-1900s
Upon his father's death in 1939, J.E. Barbey assumed the presidency of Vanity Fair, a position that he held for the next quarter century. During that time, he led the company through turbulent times, such as the economic changes that came with World War II. In 1941 the war brought about an embargo on silk, and the company began using rayon in the production of its lingerie. (The silk embargo also led the company to drop the word "Silk" from the official corporate name in March 1942.) Throughout the rest of the 1940s, Vanity Fair perfected the use of other new types of lingerie fabrics and subsequently introduced products made from a nylon tricot material in 1948.
These innovations changed the face of the lingerie industry. Nylon tricot was soon considered to be an ideal lingerie fabric because of its strength, wearing power, elasticity, and ease-of-care features. Its use also enabled the company to produce lingerie with a variety of fashionable features and in many popular colors. As a result, in 1950 Vanity Fair became the first lingerie manufacturer to receive the Coty Award for Design.
In 1951 Barbey, who owned nearly all of the company's common stock, decided to take the company public. About one-third of Barbey's shares were sold via an initial public offering. The stock traded over the counter until 1966, when a secondary stock offering of shares held by the J.E. Barbey Estate and Trusts was completed (Barbey had died in 1956). The offering represented about a quarter of the outstanding shares and left the Barbey trusts with about a 25 percent stake in Vanity Fair Mills. The offering also enabled the company to gain a listing on the prestigious New York Stock Exchange.
The founder's son's death marked the end of Barbey leadership at the company. Harold G. Miller, who had been with Vanity Fair since 1919, was named chairman. Neal Dow and Miller both served brief stints as president before Manford O. Lee began a long tenure in the position in early 1959. Lee, who began with the company in 1942, was named chairman in 1965 following Miller's retirement.
Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the company achieved steady growth through its production of lingerie and foundation garments. Overseas expansion began in 1958 when Vanity Fair entered into an agreement with the U.K. firm Wolsey Ltd. to make Vanity Fair-style lingerie under the brand Wolsey-Vanity Fair. A similar agreement was reached with an Australian firm the following year. An International Division was created in 1962 to help drive foreign expansion. In 1967, as sales growth for lingerie items was beginning to top off, Vanity Fair attempted to offset the effects by expanding into the robe and loungewear market.
First Acquisitions in 1969; Emergence of VF Corporation
In the late 1960s, Vanity Fair began its evolution into a multibrand clothing powerhouse under the leadership of Manford Lee. The firm completed two major acquisitions in 1969, including the purchase of the H.D. Lee Company, Inc., a manufacturer of men's and boys' jeans and casual pants based in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. Also acquired was Reading, Pennsylvania-based Berkshire International Corporation, one of the world's largest producers of women's hosiery.
H.D. Lee had been established in the midwestern United States in 1889 as a wholesaler called the H.D. Lee Mercantile Company. In the early 1900s, the firm began selling overalls that it obtained from a supplier in the eastern United States. Because deliveries from this supplier were often unreliable, Lee began manufacturing its own overalls, jackets, and dungarees in a factory in Salina, Kansas. It also introduced the Lee Union-All, a garment designed to protect an entire suit or uniform. The Union-All became the official doughboy fatigue uniform during World War I. Beginning in the 1920s, Lee launched a series of innovative fabrics and apparel, including heavy-duty denim and Lee Rider cowboy pants. In the 1940s, Lee improved its cowboy pants with a tighter fit and the Tighter Rider brand became the best fitting cowboy pants available. The company established its International Division in 1959, and was rewarded a Presidential "E" citation in 1964 for making an outstanding contribution to the export expansion program of the United States.
Berkshire International traced its roots back to the early 1900s, when it was founded as Berkshire Knitting Mills, a manufacturer of cotton stockings. The company's production process applied paraffin wax to cotton thread to give the woven stockings the luster of silk. Berkshire developed into the world's largest manufacturer of women's hosiery, thanks in part to the popularity of motion pictures featuring beautiful actresses in short skirts and stockings, as well as to the outbreak of World War I, which fueled domestic production.
After acquiring the Lee Company and Berkshire International, Vanity Fair changed its name to VF Corporation as a means of reflecting its expansion into these new areas. VF Corporation was designated the parent company of H.D. Lee and Berkshire International, and a new subsidiary was formed under the Vanity Fair name to house the intimate apparel business. Another consequence of the acquisition of Berkshire was that VF gained a large amount of real estate that the latter company had needed because hosiery manufacturing demands a great deal of physical space. In 1970 some of Berkshire's unused factory space in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, three miles west of Reading was converted into the first VF factory outlet store. The second opened in Monroeville, Alabama, ten years later, and over the following two decades about four dozen more would begin operating. Initially the outlets offered only overstocks, factory seconds, and the like, but eventually about half of the merchandise was goods that had been specifically planned for sale through this channel.
Meanwhile, in 1971, VF acquired Kay Windsor, Inc., a manufacturer of budget-priced, ready-to-wear women's dresses and sportswear. This business encountered difficulties during the 1970s because of the growing popularity of women's pantsuits, however, and its division was closed down in 1982.
In 1977 a VF Corporation International Division was established to manage the company's growing operations overseas. The need for this new division had arisen as the export of Vanity Fair intimate apparel to Europe and the Far East soon grew to include many of the products from the Lee Company and Berkshire International. VF reported profits of $28 million on revenues of $470 million that year.
An Industry Leader in the 1980s
Although the jeans market was beginning to experience diminished demand, VF entered the 1980s in a more profitable position than either of the two other major jeans makers, Levi Strauss & Co. and Blue Bell, Inc. VF's success was attributed to less dependence on foreign markets; earnings from other areas, such as lingerie; million-dollar investments in capital improvements; and tighter inventory controls. VF also benefited from Levi Strauss's decision to expand the distribution of its products to mass-merchandise outlets. Independent retailers that had previously carried the Levi's brand angrily responded to this development by stocking the Lee brand instead. Because of the rising demand for Lee's products, several of VF's Berkshire International sites were converted to jeans manufacturing facilities, as Lee became VF's largest operating division, accounting for as much as 80 percent of the corporation's revenues in the early 1980s.
In 1980 Lawrence R. Pugh joined VF as president and chief operating officer. Pugh had previously worked in a variety of management positions at various companies, most recently as head of Samsonite's luggage division. Manford Lee lost a battle with cancer in early 1982, and Pugh became CEO in addition to president. He became chairman of VF the following year. At that time, Robert Gregory was the president of the Lee division, and he joined Pugh in an effort to inject new life into the sluggish jeans market. The two men embarked upon a marketing strategy to set Lee apart from other jeans industry leaders by segmenting production into men's and women's lines. VF became one of the first producers to manufacture stretch jeans for women, as well as dressier, more expensive jeans, which began competing with the designer lines that had become popular. VF developed the Ms. Lee brand, which soon became the best-selling line of women's jeans in the United States.
Meanwhile, VF was also segmenting and upgrading its Vanity Fair lingerie lines with more fashionable items to appeal to younger women. In addition to introducing new products, Pugh increased spending for advertising, expanded the company's retail distribution channels, and increased the size of the VF sales force. The new initiatives helped propel revenues past $1 billion for the first time in 1993.
Continuing to diversify, in 1984 VF acquired Modern Globe, Inc., a manufacturer of men's and women's cotton undergarments since 1917, for $37.4 million. VF also purchased Bassett-Walker, Inc., a producer of fleece activewear based in Martinsville, Virginia, in November 1984 for $293.3 million. Bassett-Walker traced its origins to the founding of the Virginia Underwear Company in 1928 and by 1960 had become one of the largest manufacturers of knitted outerwear in the United States. The addition of these companies to VF's corporate portfolio helped the parent company continue to diversify, which allowed it to avoid reliance upon any one product or market segment.
In 1986 VF became the United States' largest apparel manufacturer and domestic jeans supplier when it acquired the Blue Bell Holding Company, Inc., a competitor that was the producer of Wrangler jeans, for $762 million. Blue Bell traced its origins to Hudson Overall Company, which was formed in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1904. The company was renamed Blue Bell Overall Company in 1919 and merged with its chief competitor, Big Ben Manufacturing, in 1926. Ten years later, Blue Bell merged with another major work clothes manufacturer, Globe Superior Corporation, forming Blue Bell-Globe Manufacturing Company. After acquiring the H.D. Bob Company in 1940 and Casey Jones in 1943, the newly named Blue Bell, Inc. had begun manufacturing garments for the military in World War II. After the war, the company had applied the production methods it used in making military garments to the manufacture of casual clothing and western-style wear. In 1947 the brand name Wrangler was developed for this rapidly growing product line.
VF's friendly purchase of Blue Bell was viewed as an ideal marriage between two companies that had similar manufacturing cultures. The merger offered VF an opportunity to expand more deeply into menswear, while also having available resources to broaden its distribution channels to include mass merchants and discount stores. Furthermore, when VF acquired Blue Bell, it purchased not only the Wrangler product line but also Blue Bell's other holdings: the Rustler jeans product line, Jantzen and JanSport swimwear and sportswear, Red Kap occupational apparel, and licenses to the Marithé and François Girbaud upscale sportswear collections. The Rustler brand had been introduced by Blue Bell in 1979 as a basic jean to be sold through mass merchandisers. Red Kap, founded in 1922, had been acquired by Blue Bell in 1964. Blue Bell acquired Jantzen in 1980, 70 years after the swimwear maker's founding. Four years later, Jantzen acquired JanSport, maker of backpacks and bookbags.
Although VF had grown considerably in size as a result of its many acquisitions throughout the 1980s, declining jeans sales finally caught up to it in 1989. In the past, whenever one division's sales had slowed, VF had managed to survive the slump by relying on strong sales in its other divisions. This time, however, the company was paying the price for its decision three years earlier to begin marketing its Lee jeans through mass merchandisers and discount outlets. Just as competitor Levi Strauss had found when it attempted the same thing, the marketing error of moving into the discount realm ended up alienating department store buyers, who began refusing to carry the Lee line because of the lower-quality image it now possessed. Without the aid of department and specialty stores, VF found itself amidst a marketplace already dominated by low-cost importers with widely recognized brand names and large consumer advertising budgets. The Lee division traditionally had not given retail stores significant advertising support and found itself at a sizable disadvantage. As a result, both sales and profits in the jeans area fell significantly.
Compounding the company's problems was the growing popularity of a new line of casual men's apparel called Dockers, which had recently been introduced by Levi Strauss. The Dockers brand cut severely into VF's sales of jeans. VF had not changed its basic Lee Rider style, and had been so involved in rejuvenating its jeans business that it had neglected to notice that other manufacturers had expanded into different trouser lines that took advantage of new apparel trends.
Early 1990s: Rejuvenation, New String of Acquisitions
In the early 1990s, VF not only began taking further measures to rejuvenate its jeans sales but also started focusing on the market segment of women aged 25 to 44. It continued to offer increased marketing for its women's jeans lines, while also emphasizing support for other women's apparel such as the JanSport and Jantzen lines. In 1990 the company purchased the manufacturing operations of intimate apparel brands Vassarette and Form-O-Uth from Munsingwear, Inc. for $11.5 million and added them to the intimate apparel division. The following year marked the $29 million acquisition of Healthtex, Inc. a leading manufacturer of children's wear.
With a diverse array of products under its corporate umbrella, as well as numerous distribution options, VF instituted a program to strengthen relationships with its retailers and its consumers. First, VF began investing more time and money into researching the buying patterns, needs, and lifestyles of its consumers, so as to better serve them. The company then offered its retailers increased advertising and merchandising support based on the results of its consumer research. The information obtained through market research was also helpful in determining which brands to emphasize at any given point in time. Furthermore, VF's proprietary Market Response System was introduced, providing an electronic link between retailers' sales floors and corresponding VF divisions and allowing VF to keep its products in stock at all times.
VF also saw continued growth as a result of its ongoing acquisition program. In 1992 the company purchased three European intimate apparel companies. VF spent $34.6 million for the Valero Group, a Paris-based firm that owned the Variance, Siltex, Bolero, and Silhouette brand names. The Spanish company Vives Vidal, S.A. (Vivesa) and its French affiliate Jean Bellanger Enterprises were bought for $116.3 million, bringing onboard the Intima Cherry, Lou, Carina, and Gemma intimate apparel brands. These additions, combined with the success of newly developed products throughout the year, helped VF break the $3 billion mark in annual sales for the first time in the company's history. With the purchases, VF's international division posted a sales increase of 52 percent for 1992.
Following that record year, Pugh handed down his role as president to Mackey J. McDonald, while still remaining at the company's helm as chairman and CEO. McDonald was a one-time president of the Wrangler division who had worked his way through the ranks since joining VF in 1983. Together, the two led VF through a year of rejuvenated jeans sales, with the exception of the Girbaud division, which began experiencing a decline.
Completed in January 1994 were the acquisitions of Nutmeg Industries, Inc., for $352.2 million, and the H.H. Cutler Company, for $154.7 million, both of which helped VF become a leading supplier of licensed sports apparel. VF's Bassett-Walker division actually benefited from these acquisitions as well, as it became the main supplier of knitwear for the two companies, and therefore increased its output.
The year 1994 was also characterized by cooperative endeavors between different VF divisions and other well-known companies. For example, H.H. Cutler teamed up with Walt Disney Company to create playwear featuring characters from the movie The Lion King, all of which sold out quickly and prompted the creation of similar items the following year featuring Pocahontas. Also, H.H. Cutler and Healthtex combined to introduce a Fisher-Price brand of children's discount clothing. Jantzen worked with Nike, Inc. to develop a new line of performance swimwear, while Nutmeg readied itself to launch some of its 1995 sports apparel under the Lee Sport name.
Unique projects and ideas such as those above, coupled with VF's conservative financial strategies and high level of brand name recognition by consumers, enabled the company to break the $5 billion mark in annual sales for 1995. At the end of the year, Pugh once again handed down one of his roles at VF to McDonald, who added the responsibilities of being CEO to his list of duties as company president. Pugh, who had overseen the company's growth from two brands to nearly two dozen, remained with the company as its chairman.
Entering the late 1990s, a good majority of VF's products were competing in mature markets, which dictated that the company's future growth was contingent on deriving ways to gain market share. In VF's favor was the evolving trend in many businesses toward dressing more casually at work. But rather than rely solely on such consumer trends and buying patterns, VF began actively formulating new methods to reach consumers and provide them with the best customer service possible, while at the same time increasing name brand recognition. For example, the company began testing a new interactive touch-screen computer program in stores called the Lee FitFinder, aimed at helping customers determine the best sizes and styles for their individual body types.
Late 1990s and Beyond: Restructuring and Adding Brands for Future Growth
The historic breaking of the $5 billion sales plateau in 1995 was accompanied by the negative news of a huge decline in net income, which dropped from $274.5 million to $157.3 million. This falloff highlighted the need for cost containment, particularly in an era in which consumers were increasingly seeking quality products at less-than-premium prices. One initiative to contain costs undertaken in the late 1990s was to move more of the manufacturing operations offshore. At the end of 1995, VF announced that it would close nine U.S. plants, laying off 3,800 workers in the process, and open new plants in Mexico and Central America. At the time, the company had about 80 percent of its manufacturing in the United States, and it was aiming to reduce this figure to 65 percent. Around this same time, VF began manufacturing and marketing Lee jeans in China through a joint venture in the province of Guangdong. In December 1997 subsidiary VF do Brasil Ltda. was formed to coordinate manufacturing and marketing activities of the Lee brand in Brazil, the second largest jeanswear market in the world.
One of the first initiatives that McDonald launched after becoming CEO was a program called "consumerization," in which the company aimed to reorient all of its operations--including manufacturing, marketing, systems technology--toward meeting the needs of customers. VF needed a new organizational structure to support the new strategy because the old divisional arrangement was too complicated. Starting in 1997 the company's 17 domestic and foreign divisions were consolidated into five operating units called "coalitions": Jeanswear, Intimate Apparel, Knitwear, Playwear, and International. The restructuring cost about $150 million, and it was aimed at saving a similar amount by eliminating the redundancies of the divisional structure. At the same time, VF said that it would spend an additional $250 million over a four-year period to revamp its product line through a fresh round of advertising, consumer research, and product redesign. The company set a goal of achieving an additional $2 billion in revenue during this period, which would result in overall sales of $7 billion by 2000.
In March 1997, meanwhile, VF signed a letter of intent to acquire Maidenform Worldwide Inc., maker of intimate apparel under the Maidenform, Oscar de la Renta, and Self Expression brands. The acquisition of Maidenform, which had annual revenues of about $400 million, would have represented a major expansion of VF's intimate apparel business, but the deal was called off in April. Later in 1997 VF expanded its jeans portfolio with the purchase of the Brittania brand from Levi Strauss. Brittania was a mass-market brand that VF subsequently repositioned as a fashion-forward, young men's jeans brand. Then in October 1997 the company announced that it would break with its Pennsylvania roots by moving the corporate headquarters from Wyomissing to Greensboro, North Carolina, in order to locate the corporate staff closer to where much of the firm's marketing and support units were positioned. The move was completed in June 1998. VF's factory outlet in Wyomissing, the company's largest, stayed put.
VF succeeded in bolstering its intimate apparel lines by acquiring Bestform Group Inc. in February 1998. VF had had only two U.S. intimate apparel brands--Vanity Fair and Vassarette--but now gained such well-known brands as Bestform, Exquisite Form, Lily of France, Josie, Natori, and Oscar de la Renta (Bestform had purchased the license for the latter from Maidenform in October 1997). The addition of the privately held Bestform, which was founded in 1924 and had annual revenues of about $270 million, would push VF's intimate apparel revenues past the $1 billion mark, making it one of the top three intimate apparel makers in the United States, with about 11 percent market share. There were three other significant developments in 1998: VF divested its license for the Girbaud designer clothing line; Pugh retired in October from his position as chairman, which was assumed by McDonald, who remained president and CEO as well; and VF acquired Penn State Textile Manufacturing, Inc., maker of restaurant apparel as well as table linens and restaurant supplies. Three more workwear companies were acquired in 1999: Horace Small (public safety and postal apparel), Todd Uniform (custom-designed business uniforms), and Fibrotek (clean-room apparel).
VF's acquisition spree continued in 2000. Eastpak, a maker of backpacks and daypacks, was purchased from Sunbeam Corporation. VF also purchased the Chic and H.I.S. jeans brands from Chic by H.I.S., Inc. and the Gitano jeans brand from Fruit of the Loom, Inc., which was in bankruptcy proceedings. The 2000 purchases were rounded out with the buyout of The North Face, Inc., which was in financial trouble and on the verge of filing for bankruptcy. North Face, which had annual revenues of approximately $240 million, produced outerwear and high-tech sporting gear. All told, VF spent $206.5 million and assumed $107.7 million in debt on these 2000 purchases.
The acquisitions of the late 1990s and 2000 brought about a need for a fine-tuning of the coalition organizational structure. In late 2000 a new Outdoor coalition was created to house North Face, Eastpak, and JanSport brands. An Imagewear coalition combined the company's uniform and knitwear arms. At the same time, VF announced that it was discontinuing the nonapparel operations of the four recently acquired workwear businesses, closing another six higher-cost North American manufacturing operations, and consolidating its distribution centers in North America and Europe. The actions involved 2,700 employees losing their jobs. The company recorded restructuring charges of just under $120 million in association with these moves.
Even with the string of acquisitions, VF fell well short of its $7 billion sales goal for 2000, although revenues that year did reach a record $5.75 billion. Net income for the year fell thanks to the restructuring charge. Profits would fall still further the following year, and revenues would decline as well, as the retail market was hit hard by the economic recession in the United States and as another late-year restructuring was launched. In November 2001 VF announced that it would close down or divest three underperforming businesses: the company's private-label knitwear operation, the Fibrotek workwear unit, and the Jantzen swimwear business; the latter was sold to Perry Ellis International in March 2002 for $25 million. The restructuring also involved the closure of more than 30 U.S. plants and the elimination of more than 13,000 jobs, or 18 percent of the total workforce. When the plant closures were complete, only about 15 percent of the company's merchandise would be made in the United States, as another wave of production was shifted to Mexico, Central America, and the Far East. Restructuring charges for 2001 totaled $236.8 million, as the company aimed to cut its yearly operating costs by $115 million.
Continuing to focus on cost containment in the difficult economic environment of the early 2000s, VF announced in October 2002 that it would close five more U.S. plants and lay off about 3,000 more workers, thereby reducing its U.S. manufacturing to 10 percent of the overall total. The cost-cutting efforts resulted in improved profitability for nearly every VF business in 2002, although all told the firm posted a net loss of $154.5 million as a result of restructuring charges and a $527.3 million charge taken for a change in accounting policy for goodwill. With a low level of long-term debt and nearly $500 million in cash on hand, VF was poised to return to the acquisition arena, with prime targets including makers of jeanswear, intimate apparel, and outdoor apparel as well as "lifestyle" brands that might encompass several product categories. Having reacted quickly to reign in costs in the highly competitive marketing environment of the early 21st century, and with a history of being extremely adept in reacting to industry occurrences in positive and productive ways, VF Corporation appeared to possess the potential for continued growth and success.
Principal Subsidiaries: Bestform Inc.; Bulwark Protective Apparel, Ltd. (Canada); H.I.S. Sportswear AG (Germany; 97%); JanSport, Inc.; Lee Bell, Inc.; Les Dessous Boutique Diffusion S.A. (France); The H.D. Lee Company, Inc.; The North Face, Inc.; The North Face (Europe) Limited (U.K.); Vanity Fair, Inc.; Vanity Fair Intimates, LP; Vives Vidal Vivesa, S.A. (Spain); VF Chile S.A.; VF Diffusion S.a.r.l. (France); VF de Argentina S.A.; VF do Brasil Ltda. (Brazil); VF Ege Soke Giyim Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. (Turkey); VF Europe B.V.B.A. (Belgium); VF Factory Outlet, Inc.; VF Germany Textil-Handels GmbH; VF Imagewear (East), Inc.; VF Imagewear (West), Inc.; VF Investments S.a.r.l. (Luxembourg); VF Luxembourg S.a.r.l.; VF Italia, S.r.l. (Italy); VF (J) France, S.A.; VF Jeanswear Limited Partnership; VF Lingerie (France) S.A.; VF Northern Europe Ltd. (U.K.); VF Playwear, Inc.; VF Polska Sp. z.o.o. (Poland); VF Scandinavia A/S (Denmark); VFJ Credit Corp.; Wrangler Apparel Corp.; Wrangler Clothing Corp.
Principal Operating Units: Imagewear Coalition; International Jeanswear Coalition; North & South America Jeanswear Coalition; Playwear Coalition; Global Intimate Apparel Coalition; Outdoor Coalition.
Principal Competitors: Levi Strauss & Co.; Sara Lee Corporation; J.C. Penney Company, Inc.; The Gap, Inc.; The Warnaco Group, Inc.; Fruit of the Loom, Inc.; Russell Corporation; Limited Brands, Inc.
Related information about Corporation
otheruses
A corporation is a legal entity which, while being composed of natural persons, exists completely separately from them. The extent and scope of its status and capacity is determined by the law of the place of incorporation.
Investors and entrepreneurs often form joint stock companies and incorporate them to facilitate a business; Corporations may also be formed for local government (municipal corporation), policial, religious, and charitable purposes (not-for-profit corporation), or government programs (government-owned corporation). Under such a doctrine (traditionally seen as a legal fiction), a corporation enjoys many of the rights and obligations of individual persons, such as the ability to own property, sign binding contracts, pay taxes, have certain constitutional rights, and otherwise participate in society. (Note that corporations do not possess all the rights appertaining to individuals: in most jurisdictions, for example, a corporation cannot become a citizen and vote.)
In common law countries, the classic statement of this principle is found in Lennard's Carrying Co Ltd v Asiatic Petroleum Co Ltd 1915
AC 705, where Lord Haldane said:
"My Lords, a corporation is an abstraction. its active and directing will must consequently be sought in the person of somebody who is really the directing mind and will of the corporation, the very ego and centre of the personality of the corporation."
The most salient features of incorporation include:
Limited Liability
Unlike in a partnership or sole proprietorship, members of a corporation have "limited" liability for the corporation's debts and obligations: see leading case in common law,
Perpetual Lifetime
The assets and structure of the corporation exist beyond the lifetime of any of its members or agents. This allows for stability and accumulation of capital, which thus becomes available for investment in projects of a larger size and over a longer term than if the corporate assets remained subject to dissolution and distribution. This feature also had great importance in the medieval period, when land donated to the Church (a corporation) would not generate the feudal fees that a lord could claim upon a landholder's death. However, in practice, dissolution only occurs for corporations that request it or fail to meet annual filing requirements.)
Ownership and control
Humans and other legal entities composed of humans (such as trusts and other corporations) can be members of corporations. In the case of for-profit corporations, these members hold shares and are thus called shareholders. In either category, the corporation comprises a collective of individuals with a distinct legal status and with special privileges not provided to ordinary unincorporated businesses, to voluntary associations, or to groups of individuals.
Typically, a board of directors governs a corporation on the behalf of the members. The corporate members elect the directors, and the board has a fiduciary duty to look after the interests of the corporation. The corporate officers such as the CEO, president, treasurer, and other titled officers are usually chosen by the board to manage the affairs of the corporation.
Corporations can also be controlled (in part) by creditors such as banks. Creditors are not said to "own" the corporation as shareholders do, but can outweigh the shareholders in practice, especially if the corporation is experiencing financial difficulties and cannot survive without credit.
Members of a corporation are said to have a "residual interest." As part of this registration, it must in many cases be required to designate the principal address of the corporation as well as a Registered Agent (a person or company that is designated to receive legal service of process). As part of the registration, it may also be required to designate an agent or other legal representative of the corporation depending on the filing jurisdiction.
Generally, a corporation files articles of incorporation with the government, laying out the general nature of the corporation, the amount of stock it is authorized to issue, and the names and addresses of directors. Once the articles are approved, the corporation's directors meet to create bylaws that govern the internal functions of the corporation, such as meeting procedures and officer positions.
The law of the jurisdiction in which a corporation operates will regulate most of its internal activities, as well as its finances. If a corporation operates outside its home state, it is often required to register with other governments as a foreign corporation, and is almost always subject to laws of its host state pertaining to employment, crimes, contracts, civil actions, and the like. In Canada, this possibility is taken to its logical extreme: many smaller Canadian corporations have no names at all, merely numbers (e.g., "1234567 Ontario Limited").
In most countries, corporate names include the term "Corporation", or an abbreviation that denotes the corporate status of the entity. Their use puts all persons on constructive notice that they have to deal with an entity whose liability remains limited, in the sense that it does not reach back to the persons who constitute the entity; one can only collect from whatever assets the entity still controls at the time one obtains a judgment against it.
Certain jurisdictions do not allow the use of the word "company" alone to denote corporate status, since the word "company" may refer to a partnership or to a sole proprietorship, or even, archaically, to a group of not necessarily related people (for example, those staying in a tavern). See corporate manslaughter specifically, and corporate liability generally.
The present law differs among jurisdictions, and is in a state of flux. www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=1810
The word "corporation" derives from the Latin Corpus (body), representing a "body of people"; In the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, the term corporation was also used for the local government body in charge of a borough. Although devoid of some of the core characteristics by which corporations are known today, they nonetheless were enterprises, sanctioned by the state, with a form of shareholders who invested money for a specific purpose.
With the collapse of the Roman Empire, the rise of Christianity and the influx of Germanic tribes, the Roman conception of the corporation merged with other views. Different theories of the church as corporate body were favored by different individuals but all agreed on one key component: that the church was more than just its members and could maintain an existence perpetually, regardless of the death of any individual member.
This, together with discussion as to the relationship between the head of a corporation (such as the Pope) and its members, contributed not only to the development of modern corporations and corporate theory but also set the stage for many ideas that would come to fruition during the enlightenment. Kenneth Pomeranz, an economic historian, argues that the need to perform pseudo-governmental operations (such as the waging of war) accounts for the development of this economic structure in Europe but not in China or in the Middle East.
The law classifies a corporation either as a corporation sole (one person) or as a corporation aggregate (any other number).
Development of modern commercial corporations
Early corporations of the commercial sort were formed under frameworks set up by governments of states to undertake tasks which appeared too risky or too expensive for individuals or governments to embark upon. The alleged oldest commercial corporation in the world, the Stora Kopparberg mining community in Falun, Sweden, obtained a charter from King Magnus Eriksson in 1347. Many European nations chartered corporations to lead colonial ventures, such as the Dutch East India Company, and these corporations came to play a large part in the history of corporate colonialism.
In the United States, government chartering began to fall out of vogue in the mid-1800s. Many private firms in the 19th century avoided the corporate model for these reasons (Andrew Carnegie formed his steel operation as a limited partnership, and John D. New Jersey was the first state to adopt an "enabling" corporate law, with the goal of attracting more business to the state. even today, most major public corporations are set up under Delaware law.
The 20th century saw a proliferation of enabling law across the world, which some argue helped to drive economic booms in many countries before and after World War I (the advantage to the overall economy of enabling laws must, however, be viewed in light of the success of Carnegie Steel and Standard Oil, the economic stimulus of the war, the flourishing of the automotive sector, and other major economic drivers). Starting in the 1980s, many countries with large state-owned corporations moved toward privatization, the selling of publicly-owned services and enterprises to private, normally corporate, ownership. Deregulation - reducing the public-interest regulation of corporate activity - often accompanied privatization as part of an ideologically laissez-faire policy. Another major postwar shift was toward development of conglomerates, in which large corporations purchased smaller corporations to expand their industrial base. Japanese firms developed a horizontal conglomeration model, the keiretsu, which was later duplicated in other countries as well. While corporate efficiency (and profitability) skyrocketed, small shareholder control was diminished and directors of corporations assumed greater control over business, contributing in part to the hostile takeover movement of the 1980s and the accounting scandals that brought down Enron and WorldCom following the turn of the century.
More recent corporate developments include downsizing, contracting-out or out-sourcing, off-shoring and scoping down activities to core business, as information technology, global trade regimes, and cheap fossil fuels enable corporations to reduce and externalize labour costs, transportation costs and transaction costs, and thereby maximize profits.
For a history of corporations that is ?pro-corporate?, see John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Company: a Short History of a Revolutionary Idea (New York: Modern Library, 2003).
Types of corporations
For-profit and non-profit
Main article: non-profit organization
In modern economic systems, the corporate conventions of governance commonly appear in a wide variety of business and non-profit activities.
Main article: Multinational corporation.
Following on the success of the corporate model at a national level, many corporations have become transnational or multinational corporations: growing beyond national boundaries to attain sometimes remarkable positions of power and influence in the process of globalising.
The typical "transnational" or "multinational" may fit into a web of overlapping ownerships and directorships, with multiple branches and lines in different regions, many such sub-groupings comprising corporations in their own right. growth by acquisition or merger can result in a plethora of groupings scattered around and/or spanning the globe, with structures and names which do not always make clear the structures of ownership and interaction.
In the spread of corporations across multiple continents, the importance of corporate culture has grown as a unifying factor and a counterweight to local national sensibilities and cultural awareness.
National features
There are various types of corporations throughout the world.
In the United States, several corporate forms exist; The federal government usually does not grant corporate charters, except for some special instances such as Amtrak and Freddie Mac and banks and credit unions which opt not to receive charters from their home states.
Because corporate law differs from state to state, many American corporations are incorporated in a different state than their primary base of operations. Many large corporations are chartered as "Delaware corporations" under the laws of Delaware, which charges no tax on activities outside the state and has courts experienced in corporate law. Corporations set up for privacy or asset protection often charter in Nevada, which does not require disclosure of share ownership. Many other states, particularly smaller states, have harmonized their corporate law around the Model Business Corporation Act, a "guideline" statute drafted by the American Bar Association.
Legally, corporations are accorded some corporate personhood, i.e. Constitutional rights similar to those held by persons. Contrary to accepted legal precedent the U.S. Supreme Court did not rule on this question in the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Because of illness, Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite never reviewed the head notes.
Thus, without any deliberation, decision or ruling by the United States Supreme Court, the United States law has proceeded since 1886 with an accepted legal precedent based on the mistake of a clerk who reported something that never occurred.
The oldest corporation in the United States, and the oldest in North America, is the President and Fellows of Harvard College (also known as the Harvard Corporation), chartered in 1650.
Historically, most U.S. states issued charters for fixed lengths of time (for example, a manufacturing corporation might receive a charter good for 40 years), and only by an act of the legislature. Some individuals believed corporations should remain accountable to the government and used these limited charters as a means of forcing companies to do so. Most states now charter unlimited-term corporations for a small fee, and possibly for a yearly tax.
Many countries around the world now have corporate laws based upon state laws from the United States. For example, corporations in Saudi Arabia follow corporate laws copied from New York.
In Canada both the federal government and the provinces have corporate statutes, and thus a corporation may have a provincial or a federal charter. Many older corporations in Canada stem from Acts of Parliament passed before the introduction of general corporation law. The oldest corporation in Canada is the Hudson's Bay Company, chartered in 1670. Federally recognized corporations are regulated by the Canada Business Corporations Act.
In Australia corporations are registered and regulated by the Commonwealth Government through the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. Corporations law has been largely codified in the Corporations Act 2001.
German-speaking countries
Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein recognize two forms of corporation: the Aktiengesellschaft (AG), analogous to public corporations in the English-speaking world, and the Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (GmbH), similar to (and an inspiration for) the modern limited liability company.
Italy recognize two form of company with limited liability : "S.r.l", or "Società a Responsabilità Limitata" (similar to Limited liability company) and "S.p.A" or "Società Per Azioni" (similar to american stock corporation).
In many countries, including the United States and United Kingdom, corporate profits are taxed at a corporate tax rate, and dividends paid to shareholders are taxed at a separate rate.
Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations criticized the corporate form because of the separation of ownership and management.
The directors of such joint-stock companies, however, being the managers rather of other people?s money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own.... Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.
Noam Chomsky, the MIT linguist and activist describes the corporate structure as being fascist:
A corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; These include:
Limited partnership (LP)
Limited liability company (LLC)
Limited company (Ltd.)
Not-for-profit corporation
Trust company, Trust law
Sobel, Robert The Age of Giant Corporations: a Microeconomic History of American Business, 1914-1984 (1984)
Klein and Coffee.
1899: Eight men form the Reading Glove and Mitten Manufacturing Company in Reading, Pennsylvania.
1911: One of the eight, John Barbey, buys out his partners.
1913: Company's name is changed to Schuylkill Silk Mills.
1914: Company expands into the manufacture of silk lingerie.
1917: Through a contest, "Vanity Fair" is selected as a brand name for the line of lingerie.
1919: Company changes its name to Vanity Fair Silk Mills, Inc.
1942: With World War II leading to an embargo on silk, the company drops the word "Silk" from the corporate name.
1951: Vanity Fair Mills goes public.
1969: Hosiery maker Berkshire International Corporation is acquired; Vanity Fair Mills changes its name to VF Corporation; company expands into jeanswear with the purchase of H.D. Lee Company, Inc.
1984: Bassett-Walker, Inc., producer of fleece activewear, is acquired.
1986: Purchase of Blue Bell Holding Company, Inc. for $762 million brings the following brands into the fold: Wrangler and Rustler jeanswear, Jantzen and JanSport swimwear and sportswear, and Red Kap occupational apparel.
1991: Children's wear maker Healthtex, Inc. is acquired.
1997: Consumerization initiative is launched, along with a corporate restructuring of the firm's 17 divisions into five units called "coalitions": Jeanswear, Intimate Apparel, Knitwear, Playwear, and International.
1998: VF acquires Bestform Group Inc. and such intimate apparel brands as Bestform, Exquisite Form, and Lily of France; company headquarters are shifted from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, to Greensboro, North Carolina.
2000: VF acquires backpack maker Eastpak; jeans brands Chic, H.I.S., and Gitano; and The North Face, Inc., producer of outerwear and high-tech sporting gear.
2001: Company launches major restructuring involving the closure of more than 30 U.S. plants, the elimination of more than 13,000 jobs, and the divestiture of the private-label knitwear business and the Jantzen swimwear unit.
Walton Monroe Mills, Inc. Business Information, Profile, and History
Velcro Industries N.V. Business Information, Profile, and History
Company HistoryTextiles
This web site and associated pages are not associated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Vf Corporation and has no official or unofficial affiliation with Vf Corporation.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The Partywaala's have been organising weddings and events for the past 2 years now. They offer affordable price ranges for their clients and plan weddings with great detailing and proper management. They would plan out each and every function be it pre-wedding or any of the wedding day functions they take of the burden from their clients and manage everything flawlessly. "We at The Partywaala create one of a kind, unique events. We work closely with you and your family to design an event that is uniquely yours"


Last night Stormy Daniels had her say on 60 Minutes about her affair with Donald Trump and the ways in which she alleges he tried to silence her after the fact. This morning Trump finally addressed the Daniels scandal for the first time, sort of, without even mentioning her name or the affair, in a tweet which didn't make any sense when we first read it, and makes even less sense now.
So who wrote this tweet? At the least, someone was helping Trump with his tweeting this morning, and it feels like someone else wrote and posted this entirely. Let's try to put this in context. Two hours earlier, Trump tweeted this: "The economy is looking really good. It has been many years that we have seen these kind of numbers. The underlying strength of companies has perhaps never been better." Again, this is not how Trump phrases things, and he doesn't use qualifiers like "perhaps" in the middle of his hyperbolic bragging. In other words, he probably didn't write this one either.
In fact, shortly after Stormy Daniels' interview last night, Donald Trump posted a tweet promoting a book that someone wrote about him. These tweets are overly tame, and are constructed with a style and wording that Trump has never used. We don't think he's even been involved in any of these tweets. Our guess is he's curled up hiding under the desk while his remaining handlers ghost-tweet for him to try to keep up appearances.


FileMaker is known to be a flexible, customizable solution for people in niche markets to build custom apps that suit their specialized needs. For Dennis Hopkins, it allowed him to build a custom app for his wife's in-home hospice and end-of-life care veterinarian practice, Compassion 4 Paws. Dennis is a true entrepreneur and visionary; he spent many long nights coming up with the technical plans to solve some tough workflow problems his wife faced with finding a software solution customized for the hospice veterinary sector. While he did find a few veterinarian software options available, nothing seemed to fit the procedures for hospice veterinary work as they require a specialized solution.
With consulting help from 360Works and other partners in the FileMaker community, Dennis was able to build a solid solution for his wife's practice. This eventually led to a full blown vertical market solution for veterinary hospice practitioners which Dennis named REX. It had all of the bells and whistles added to make it the perfect solution for veterinary hospice practices. In this case study, we will explore how 360Works plug-ins, add-ons, and consulting helped extend the functionality of the REX solution built with FileMaker.
Dennis decided to build a FileMaker solution for Compassion 4 Paws after realizing how much time he and his wife were losing due to paper tracking the process of his wife's veterinarian work. When the business first started the paper-based processes got the job done, but as the business grew this workflow became unmanageable. Scheduling appointments, invoicing, and tracking DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) controlled medicine required a robust, customizable data management solution. This is where FileMaker began to solve their problems, and 360Works plug-ins and add-ons for FileMaker added the needed functionality to bring their solution to a higher level of functionality, and meet all of their business needs.
In order to get his solution requirements met, Dennis sought out FileMaker expertise from 360Works. He spoke with Joe Pampalon, Senior Developer at 360Works, who immediately presented him with ideas on how to solve both the form manipulation requirements and to get the offline databases syncing. When Dennis was ready to turn his custom app into a vertical market solution, Joe introduced him to 360Deploy to painlessly roll out changes to all veterinary practices and clinics using REX.
In each requirement Dennis needed, 360Works had the answer with the needed functionality for his FileMaker solution.
360Works Scribe allowed Dennis to automate the import of Excel spreadsheets containing veterinary practices and clinic locations for euthanasia purposes. This allows the REX application to send a professional courtesy notice of euthanasia via email or fax to all of the veterinary practices involved in a particular patient's care. All REX needs to know is the name and contact information of those practices, and it seamlessly sends out the notices. Scribe made it much easier to import an existing list, rather than the previous workflow of manually adding 300 - 400 clinics per region into REX. Veterinarians can simply drop their file into a container field in FileMaker and at the click of a button the import brilliantly works in front of them while behind the scenes a very scripted process is doing the work.
Scribe makes the import much easier and stable, and reduces the issues you could experience running this sort of import manually in FileMaker. For any small errors that did occur, Joe programmed human-friendly error messages to intuitively guide the user through the corrective process. Dennis recalls, "I used to have to key in all of the different information, now the system is automated and so much quicker." Thanks to Scribe auto-populating PDF fields in euthanasia forms and invoices, names and contact information are present for an automated, streamlined workflow.
REX is able to receive the on and offline mobility it needed thanks to 360Works MirrorSync. The MirrorSync software is fast, scalable, and customizable making it the perfect add-on for medical professionals to work offline in critical, varying situations and sync the changes when they have internet connection. Hospice veterinarians who are out on the field and in homes where there is little to no network connection can update their data and have it sync back with the hosted database on the server. This is especially beneficial for practices with 2 or more veterinarians updating the same file, as MirrorSync has robust conflict resolution designed with the user in mind. When 2 people make a change at the same time, MirrorSync provides several smart options for handling the conflict such as merging the changes together, flagging the edit, user picks, most recent change wins, hub always wins, or email administrator.
In order to provide the best solution, Dennis enlisted the help of other partners and developers in the FileMaker Community, including Paradise Partners for their soSIMPLE Calendar and Productive Computing for design help and QuickBooks integration. During this process of several developers updating the same FileMaker solution, there needed to be a streamlined way to make changes to the production file and merge changes with the live file seamlessly. Joe implemented 360Deploy to solve this problem. Now, all developers could make their changes to their development files and update the live production file with the click of a button. Furthermore, if Dennis needs to make his own modifications to layouts or scripts as he can continues to develop REX, he can easily modify it on his dev copy and painlessly rollout the changes to his vertical market solution users.


text:
Q: Drop all but one node from Service Discovery We use the Consul Service Discovery mechanism to fetch a list of proxies through which we scrape certain targets. There are multiple proxies for redundancy but ultimately they all provide the exact same information.
Now we'd like have the relabeling always drop all but one (random) node returned from SD. It must not be hardcoded as the names and number of proxies can and will change.
After looking at the relabeling implementation I don't think this is possible, but maybe there is some clever hack to achieve this.
Question: Is it possible to drop all but one (random) node from Prometheus Service Discovery?

A: This is not possible. I'd suggest putting a load balancer of some form in front of the proxies.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Apartment offering convenient living in Bahrain is available for rent.
This flat comprises 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a well-equipped kitchen.
The apartment has fancy furniture in all rooms.
Swimming pool, sauna, steam bath, and gym are available in the apartment's building.
The rental price is BHD 400.


text:
Eliminating economic isolation, Invitation, Reader
An Economy Built on Sharing
This time of year, the messages from advertisers to consume come to a fever pitch. Liesel Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller offer a radical approach to get off of capitalism's hamster wheel and gain what we truly want — a sense of belonging.
Online shopping has exploded during the pandemic, but there's an alternative to all those brown box deliveries. It's Buy Nothing, a worldwide sharing project that helps people get what they need without shopping, and declutter without leaving home. Even better, Buy Nothing groups make community visible and connected, even while physically distanced.
In their new book, The Buy Nothing, Get Everything Plan, co-founders Liesl Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller explain the philosophy behind a local sharing project that became the worldwide Buy Nothing network of hyperlocal gift economies. They describe the inspiration of community sharing Clark witnessed in Nepal, and include stories from Buy Nothing participants whose lives have been changed by shopping less and giving, receiving, and sharing more.
Our Western culture is based on capitalism and a market economy, drawing a stark line between those who have and those who don't. An item's known market value is of utmost importance, and people with spending money are able to purchase things much more easily. Because of this, there is great social value placed on amassing personal wealth and status in the form of brand-new or so-called luxury items, and many people associate the use of secondhand items with poverty and lack of social status. People who are struggling financially are bombarded with societal messages that their poverty is shameful, something to be hidden, and we internalize the message that only the financially well-off are "givers," while those with fewer resources are inherently "takers."
Moreover, the social connections we form aren't built around our homes and neighborhoods in the same way they used to be. We create social networks through work, schools, houses of worship, gyms, and other "third places" away from home. Many of us lead daily lives in which we hardly recognize our next-door or across-the-hall neighbors. People want to maintain their privacy, or, perhaps, they might want this connection but don't feel safe or comfortable initiating contact in person.
Despite the fact that we all have needs and wants, and an innate ability and desire to both give and receive, there are no prescribed ways to do this on equal footing, person to person. And this is contributing to an excess of stuff that's draining our bank accounts and natural resources. In any given neighborhood, there is a huge collection of things that are owned by individuals but could become shared resources. In a single community of fifty homes, there might be close to fifty complete sets of home tools, car seats for newborns and toddlers, toys for every stage of child development, cookbooks, plumbing snakes, clothing of every size and color, furniture, old monitors, camping gear, and so on. Sharing this bounty of stuff is not our ingrained cultural habit, and so our homes are filled to the brim with personal sets of everything that advertising has told us we need to fulfill our dreams, and everything we think we need to have in case times are tough and we find ourselves alone, needing to survive hardship.
What if each household stopped buying these things, and we shared more? Would we find things of value? Our original hope in launching the Buy Nothing Project was that by doing so, we would reduce our overall consumption and yet still meet our daily needs. By building social status through our generosity as givers and grace as recipients, we would each learn how to share, with trust, on an equal playing field. And most important, we would learn to trust that there is enough (stuff, bounty, human kindness) to go around.
We've held on tightly to the idealized image of the village gift economy, in hopes of replicating these ideas at home to strengthen our communities and learn to use and repurpose our tangible and intangible gifts in various ways.
Step 1: Give. You will discover how to bond a little more closely with your neighbors, through sharing more of our things and ourselves. We've seen it happen, over and over. With a local giving culture, you won't have to buy things to feel joy, clothe your family, furnish your home, repair what's broken, or help others. You will begin to build a local culture that values sharing and communal use of stuff above individual collections held for solitary use.
If there's one thing we've learned from running a few thousand local gift economies, it's that giving is an action that brings people an immediate giddy joy, and joy is a solid foundation for building strong relationships. It's also a first step in helping someone near you reduce their consumption of resources. Giving what we already have is the super glue we need to bind us to a communal web of sharing that can have a more powerful impact on your life than any big box store you've pushed a shopping cart through.
In its purest anthropological sense, gift-giving is a symbolic form of reciprocity that can help integrate each of us into society, ensuring we'll be cared for and guaranteeing our own role in improving the lot of others. Serial gift-giving is akin to a political move, one that sparks unspoken obligation, creating a bond between giver and receiver, and integration of both into the greater good. This may sound like a lot of anthro-economic-ethno-enviro mumbo jumbo, but our experiment has borne out some truths that we've witnessed several hundred thousand times.
Through the simple act of offering up something you no longer need, indeed, something you may have considered throwing away, you'll both help the environment and improve your social standing. Conspicuous consumption isn't doing our planet any favors; conspicuous sharing is the antidote, a powerful tool for good, both social and environmental. Anonymous giving, as laudable as it is, doesn't necessarily provide much-needed binding social glue for a community.
When we set up our first Buy Nothing Project group, we chose Facebook as our platform because it was where people already were, where it's easy to see mutual friends you share with strangers, and where all of the giving could happen in full view of each group member. Through our Buy Nothing experiment, we've learned a lesson that applies to all giving, online and in person: when a group of people witnesses giving, receiving, and sharing on a daily basis, it builds stronger connections among everyone, not just those on either end of each item or service being shared. There's a sense of collective joy that builds around watching gifts being given and received.
This edited excerpt from The Buy Nothing, Get Everything Plan: Discover the Joy of Spending Less, Sharing More, and Living Generously by Liesl Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller (Atria Books, 2020) appears in Yes Magazine by permission of the authors and publisher.
Rebecca Rockefeller is a social media and storytelling coach who has been working to build a more resilient and equitable world through the Buy Nothing Project. A graduate of the Evergreen State College, Rebecca has spent time as a teacher, community organizer, nonprofit executive director, and writer. She and her two daughters raise chickens, farm food, and grow flowers on an island in the Salish Sea.
Liesl Clark is a writer, director, and cinematographer who has produced more than 20 documentaries on science and exploration for NOVA, National Geographic, and the BBC. She's won numerous awards for her journalistic work, including a Primetime Emmy and the duPont-Columbia Journalism Award: the Gold Baton. As director of the Magic Yeti Children's Libraries, Liesl is working to increase literacy for children in six remote villages in Nepal.


 Products | Bridgestone India Automotive Products Pvt.Ltd.
Automotive components are created using Bridgestone's advanced level resin processing technology.
Bridgestone manufactures these products at our various locations in the world, contributing comfort and safety to your driving experience.


Friday starts with an Orientation & Safety Breakfast in Merry Acres' Plantation Ballroom. Shuttles will transport hunters to hunting ground. Lunch will be served on site, more hunting throughout the afternoon, followed by transportation back to Merry Acres Inn for some relaxation and refreshing before Friday Night's party at the Hassan Temple with a buffet-style banquet, bar, silent and live auctions.
Saturday will be a welcome repeat of Friday's events with the inclusion of a closing celebration with live entertainment to Saturday night's party and auctions at the Hassan Temple.
The Southwest Georgia Chapter of Quail Forever is committed, first and foremost, to giving toward future generations of quail preservationists. Donating more than $170,000 thus far to local and regional quail habitats, youth hunting sports, and quail research.
As a part of the Quail Forever family, the Quail Forever Southwest Georgia Chapter also supports national campaigns, one such example is our passion for the "No Child Left Indoors" endeavor.


Diamine Autumn Oak Ink Sample (3ml Vial) - Anderson Pens, Inc.
A 3ml sample of Diamine Autumn Oak fountain pen ink, labeled with the name of the ink brand and color, in a plastic ink sample vial with a dip at the bottom to allow you to easily get every drop. Diamine Autumn Oak ink is a vibrant shade of orange.
Of the three samples of ink I received, this is my favorite. I love the way this ink shades. No doubt I will buy a bottle of this color and use it often.
This is basically Noodler's Apache Sunset done in fall colors (brown/gold, rather than red-orange/yellow), but with the good behavior of Diamine inks. It is lovely, with a very broad range of shading, especially in a wet pen.
Oh my shading. Really cool range of colors that tends more towards burnt yellow/orange/rust than the eye-popping color similar inks. Really a beautiful ink.


text:
Best Car Accident Lawyer | in Fort Lauderdale
Top 5 Best car accident lawyer in Fort Lauderdale
Bysyed May 26, 2022 January 22, 2023 January 22, 2023 Best Car Accident Lawyer, in Fort Lauderdale
A car accident occurs when a car collides with another vehicle, animal, pedestrian, or any other obstruction present in it's path. Even if a person is not fatally wounded, a car accident would leave them numb and out-of-sorts. In such circumstances, people start to panic and they don't know what to do. Many people opt to not file a police report to prevent hassles.
In most cases, not filing a police report after a car accident, even if the accident was minor, is illegal. Even if neither the people nor the vehicle have sustained any injuries or defects, failing to file a report is considered a citable offence. Apart from the legal point of view, any claim made against the other driver afterwards would be considered null. If the other driver makes a claim, citing personal injuries or damage to the car, then there would be legal entanglements.
In Broward County, 41,337 cases occurred in 2017, with 24,762 injuries and 225 deaths. The state of Florida has no-fault insurance laws, which means that drivers are allowed to purchase insurance that will pay for medical treatment after the accident, regardless of the person responsible for the accident.
After an accident in Fort Lauderdale, consulting with a car accident lawyer is the best case scenario, to prevent future legal backlashes. The lawyer will help you to get compensation for any injuries sustained, even if they are minor. The car accident lawyer will also know how to deal with insurance companies, who will try to lower the settlement. A lawyer who is experienced in dealing with such scenarios would help to go through all the options after an accident, and even help to file a lawsuit, if necessary.
Steinger, Greene & Feiner provides the best attorneys in case of car accidents. They have been working for more than 20 years and have represented lots of people.
One can reach them at 2727 NW 62nd St, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309. They can also be contacted via phone by (954) 280-1781.
Meldon Law Firm is another law firm, founded by Jeffrey Meldon, which takes care of such cases.
One can reach them at 1 East Broward Blvd. Suite 700, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301.
Winegar Law Injury Lawyers founded by Joshua Winegar previously represented insurance companies, and now utilizes the insights gained there to help the victims of car accidents.
One can reach them via phone at (844)776-0067.
Clayton Trial Lawyers also provide legal representation to the victims of car accidents.
One can reach them at 401 E Las Olas Blvd, Suite 1400, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301. They can also be contacted via phone at (833)938-2300.
Coffey McPharlin is another lawyer who can be contacted in case of car accidents.
He is available at 550 South Andrews Avenue Suite 420, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301. One can contact him at (954)289-6316
A good lawyer is the most essential after a car accident and the best Fort Lauderdale car accident lawyer would help their clients get the best possible outcome.
Best car accident lawyer in Houston
Best car accident lawyer near me Cerritos
Best Car Accident Lawyer | in Tampa
Top 5 Best car accident lawyers in Tampa
Bysyed June 11, 2022 January 22, 2023
Introduction The statistics regarding car accidents in the city of Tampa shows that more than thousands of people are severely injured or lose their life due to car accidents. The latest record of casualties has been recorded as 200 and 16068 people had been severely injured. Some of the major reasons for car accidents in…
Read More Top 5 Best car accident lawyers in TampaContinue
Best Car Accident Lawyer | Cerritos
Bysyed May 27, 2022 May 27, 2022
1.3 million people die every year as a result of road accidents. This means that almost 3700 people die every day. With such alarming statistics, car accidents are a cause of huge concern. Road safety should become the utmost priority and the most common causes of car accidents, like drinking and driving, should be strictly…
Read More Best car accident lawyer near me CerritosContinue
Best Car Accident Lawyer | IN BOSTON
Top 5 BEST CAR ACCIDENT LAWYERS IN BOSTON
Bysyed January 19, 2022 January 22, 2023
Accidental injury victims are entitled to competent and devoted legal representation in order to obtain full and fair compensation for their losses. Here's when hiring a legal expert is needed for all the claims. BEST CAR ACCIDENTS LAWYERS AND LAW FIRMS IN BOSTON Bellotti Law Group PC represents clients in Boston and throughout Massachusetts. Attorneys…
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Best Car Accident Lawyer | in San Jose
Top 5 Best Car accident Lawyers in San Jose
People usually get bewildered if they or someone they know has just been wounded in an accident caused by someone else's negligence. To secure reasonable compensation for the damages, the steps taken in the days following the accident are critical. To help out with such incidents, there are some of the best attorneys and law…
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Best Car Accident Lawyer | in Maryland
Top 5 Best car accident lawyer in Maryland
Bysyed June 9, 2022 January 22, 2023
Introduction The traffic deaths in the city of Maryland are observed to be slightly increased than in the past years. Approximately 153 reported fatal crashes due to car accidents as of February 2022. The number of casualties approximately as of 5th February 2022 is recorded as 165. On a 5 your average the number of…
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in Costa Mesa
Top 5 Best car accident lawyer in Costa Mesa
Despite being extra cautious, vehicle drivers can be involved in serious collisions. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration states that the cause of death and injury in the United States is motor vehicle accidents. These mishaps can inflict physical and emotional harm to you and your family. When tragedy strikes, having a trusted legal practitioner on…
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A NEW FRONTIER MARKET HAS EMERGED: FINANCIAL- SERVICE STOCKS.
Like some thinly traded bourse in a remote part of the world, the S&P 500 bank index rose or dropped by at least 3% on more than 70 trading days through late September. The Nasdaq bank index, once a quiet congregation of community-savings institutions, experienced similar gyrations more than 30 times. And it got even more volatile in the last week of the month, with these indexes showing one-day shifts of 15% or more.
"I'm not sure I could count up that many sudden turns for either index in the 20 years before," says Raymond Stewart of Rasara Strategies, a White Plains, N.Y., institutional investment firm. "It's starting to look like what you'd see in the commodity-driven economy of a developing country," says Stewart, who has tracked banks for 29 years.
Of course, it's not just banks. Insurers were off 32% through the third quarter of this year; savings and loans, 28%; asset managers, 26%. Financial-service companies generally have surrendered 44%, according to SNL Financial, a Charlottesville, Va., research firm. And each sector has been subject to violent swings. The credit crisis has chopped an average of 26.4% off financial-stock mutual funds.
"My charter says I can carry up to 20% of assets in cash and go above that under certain market circumstances," says David Ellison, who runs the FBR Small Cap Financial and FBR Large Cap Financial funds (tickers: FBRSX and FBRFX). "Right now I'm well above that," he says. That's one reason Ellison has easily topped his peers' performance this year: His small-cap fund is up 0.25% for the year while the large-cap version is down a relatively modest 14.79%. Similarly Jeff Miller of American Independence Financial Services (ANEIX), an institutional fund that's off 5.83% in 2008, says he's had as much as 25% in cash.
By some accounts, Wells Fargo 's (WFC) purchase of Wachovia (WB), announced Friday -- and expected to occur without government assistance -- could be just the catalyst the devastated sector needs.
Whatever the case, there are a few finance names that fund veterans -- including Anton Schutz, head of Mendon Capital Advisors, as well as Ellison, Miller, Stewart, long-time bank analyst and hedge-fund manager Fred Cummings, and Warren Marcus, a former Salomon Brothers bank analyst who heads a money-management firm -- believe are good values that will emerge as long-term winners. Don't misunderstand. No one predicts an easy 12-month period for financials, regardless of Congress' passage of a bailout plan on Friday. But a handful of community banks, mid-sized regional and larger lenders with the capital to snap up the weak merit consideration, along with some insurers, investment-banking advisers and asset managers.
COMMUNITY BANKS REPRESENT an under-researched sector that has lured many investors in the past quarter as they scrambled to get out of the big banks making headlines. Many smaller lenders -- though not all -- didn't gorge themselves on securitized goodies, and now seem the better for it.
"The business model there is un- scathed -- in fact, that subsector is a major beneficiary of the turmoil in the markets this year," says Schutz, who as head of Mendon runs the Burnham Financial Industries fund (BURFX), which has a loss of 3.68% year-to-date, and the Burnham Financial Services portfolio (BURKX), off a relatively small 9.83%.
"One key trick to investing in the group is geography," says Schutz. "You don't want to venture into the high-growth, overbuilt and overvalued markets such as Florida, Arizona, Nevada and much of California, yet."
Like most investors in volatile markets, these experts make clear that smaller-cap bank stocks -- although down 8.9% year-to-date -- rose 18.3% in the third quarter. Thus, price has become an issue in what is already a restrictive sector.
"A lot of bank names are ahead of themselves right now, trading at overvalued levels compared to their historic valuations and earnings," says Cummings, who spent 19 years as an analyst for the likes of McDonald Investments. July 15 was the bottom for the sector, as the Securities and Exchange Commission's ban on short-selling financial-institution shares -- extended last week -- forced short sellers to cover their positions.
Measured in terms of price to earnings, the banking universe, with market capitalizations of $100 million to $8 billion, is trading at 21 times 2009 profit projections, due to rising prices and analysts' downward earnings revisions. That's well above historic highs of 15. And many smaller banks are paying out CD rates that far exceed short-term funding rates from Treasuries.
Even with these caveats in mind, the metrics for some smaller institutions are compelling. "In most cases, they've maintained a solid funding base and have lent to people they know; their securities portfolios are plain-vanilla Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac holdings in the case of mortgage-backed securities, C&I (commercial and industrial) loans, residential mortgages and home-equity loans," says Cummings.
"The Mom 'n Pop banks didn't get into the esoteric stuff. They've stuck to taking in deposits and writing loans, a perfect formula for a period like this," adds Stewart.
And their price-to-tangible book value ratios are reasonable. The group trades for 193% of tangible book -- on the low side of its 150% to 300% historical range.
The average Tier 1 capital ratio for community banks is 11.6%, versus 8.2% for larger banks. (Tier 1 capital is a core measure of financial strength; it is based on shareholders' equity and may also include irredeemable preferred stock. The Tier 1 capital ratio is the ratio of a bank's core equity in relation to its total risk-weighted assets.) Regulators typically use 6% as the threshold for sound capitalization.
Credit quality, a yardstick that will only become more important in a slowdown, has held up, too. The group's non-performing assets now average 1.32%, a level Cummings expects to deteriorate in the coming months, though he still thinks it is "manageable." Even with construction-loan loss reserves up 144% and earnings for the group down from 2007, Cummings says the subsector is profitable, unlike big banks.
There's another plus, says Schutz: In pinched credit markets, managements with good capital reserves can make out as lenders under the right circumstances.
Schutz is so bullish on Cleveland's TFS Financial (TFSL), with about $10 billion in assets, that he's parked almost 9% of his portfolio in it. "They actually have too much capital -- and with big guys [in trouble] and a distressed market in Ohio, they can expand their balance sheet and make loans," he says.
Management is putting its stockpile to use in another great way, too: Buying back shares. "That makes this a no-brainer," says Schutz.
TFS's gargantuan price-to-earnings ratio of 79 is misleading, he says. The lender is a mutual-holding company that has the option to buy its shares back below book value. Were it totally public and deploying all its capital, its book value would be $16.50 a share, just above its recent price of $12.63.
Stewart likes Minnesota's TCF Financial (TCB), with $16.5 billion in total assets, whose ratio of non-performing assets is under 1%. He favors the shares because TCF's Tier 1 capital is a sturdy 8.3% and its price to tangible book of 240% is in the middle of the stock's typical range. "These guys have traded at a premium because of a solid home market and the fact they might fit a larger bank's desire to acquire a stake in the Midwest," says Stewart.
Cummings is a fan of Center Financial (CLFC), a big lender in Los Angeles' Korean community. Center, with $2.1 billion in assets, has solid capital levels, including a Tier 1 figure of 9.5%. Better yet, its non-performing loan ratio is a miniscule 0.33%, compared to the current group average of 2.27%. Even after a run-up, the shares trade for a little more than 11 times earnings and 136% of its tangible book.
Care to Venture In? Cheap Prices have lured many savvy investors into financials. So far these bets have been losers.
AMONG SLIGHTLY LARGER BANKS Cummings favors Huntington Bancshares (HBAN), where credit issues -- a loan to a subprime lender in particular -- have been enough to scare investors, even though they don't seem life-threatening. The stock trades at nine times 2009 earnings projections and yields 5%. The good news, too, is that the Columbus, Ohio, bank's Tier 1 capital ratio is a healthy 9%. Its assets total more than $50 billion.
Cummings thinks a stabilized environment may fan merger activity toward the second quarter of 2009. He views Provident Bankshares (PBKS) as a likely candidate to be acquired. It sits atop a tempting market in Maryland and other parts of the region, has solid Tier 1 capital levels at 10.7% and trades below 150% of tangible book. Possible buyers would include M&T Bank (MTB), PNC Financial Services (PNC) or BB&T (BBT).
Move a bit higher up the financial food chain, and you find a group of stocks Marcus says he'd take to a bomb shelter. It includes SunTrust Banks (STI), US Bancorp (USB) and Marshall & Ilsley (MI), a trio that has credit problems but nothing approaching those of the banks making headlines. "If you asked the general bank-analyst universe what its favorite large regional would have been a year ago, SunTrust would have been most widely picked," Marcus says.
The Atlanta bank offers a dividend yield of more than 5% and, after taking Coca-Cola public in 1919, retains a sizable stake. Management has said it would tap that stockpile "in a pinch."
US Bancorp, in which Warren Buffett holds a stake, has shown solid financial strength, and has Tier 1 capital of 8.3%.
Marshall & Ilsley operates from a Milwaukee home base that is geographically removed from the real-estate debacle's Sun Belt epicenters. Moreover, management had the foresight to spin off the company's big processing subsidiary, Metavante, late last year, a move that bolstered M&I's capital cushion in advance of the banking sector's troubles this year.
Insurance seems to be the stock market's new whipping boy, as exemplified last week by spurious Washington-fed rumors about a big insurer's imminent demise. The upshot: Prudential (PRU) and MetLife (MET), two of Schutz's holdings, have drifted down to very cheap levels. While the group has typically traded at a price to book value between 1.25 and 1.5, MetLife's book value of about $42 a share is now a smidgen below its share price of $45 (For more on MetLife, see "Snoopy Braves the Turbulent Skies.") The same holds true for Prudential, which trades at about 1.2 times book, and was also the subject recently of a favorable story in Barron's ("A Gibraltar of Tough Times," Sept. 1, 2008). Pru has earned a premium to its peers due to a return on equity in the mid-teens, well above competitors', says Schutz.
Concerns about the insurers' holdings on a mark-to-market basis don't make sense, he says, noting "the business operates on long-term assets and long-term liabilities. These guys therefore don't have to sell asset-backed paper today because it's still performing."
What's more, Met and Pru both stand to gain on sales of AIG's assets, or by reeling in talent from their fallen peer. Another insurer, Aflac (AFL), gains the money manger's seal of approval because of its strong portfolio and earnings potential.
Keeping to the theme of sound and simple business models, asset managers also offer a good opportunity, after pullbacks this year. Historically, the group has traded between 15 and 17 times forward earnings. Schutz and American Independence's Miller are both bullish on investment bank Lazard (LAZ), which now fetches a price-to-earnings multiple of about 14.5.
Lazard, which doesn't put its capital into deals, stands to benefit as an adviser to investment and other companies that have to restructure or wind down their operations. As a testament to its health, Lazard is bringing home a 15% return on invested capital, says Miller, who expects it to boost cash flow 20% in 2009.
Miller also like Franklin Resources (BEN) and Federated Investors (FII) which trade at multiples of 12 and 11, respectively. Franklin's return on invested capital is 25%, while money-market behemoth Federated should benefit from a flight to quality amid recent money-fund problems. Federated also generated huge returns on invested capital -- 70% -- and is growing earnings by more than 10% a year.
Tread carefully, but there are a handful of names -- like TFS Financial, a small Ohio bank -- within the broad financial group that look attractive to successful investors in the sector.
Lest you think these portfolio managers have donned rose-tinted glasses, there are many names they don't like, and their cash levels remain high. Schutz points to AmeriCredit (ACF), a used-car lender that could suffer as consumer charge-offs mount in the months ahead, and Wilmington Trust (WL), which had the misfortune of owning now-worthless Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preferred shares. Wilmington is also taking a hit in the distressed mid-Atlantic construction-lending market.
A third institution, Umpqua Holdings (UMPQ), also is a victim of the poor construction-lending environment. One of its real-estate borrowers in Bend, Ore., has gone belly-up while still owing the small bank $3.4 million.
Cummings points to Anchor Bancorp Wisconsin (ABCW), a $4.9-in-assets outfit caught in a capital pinch, especially under the pressure of a nonperforming-assets ratio of 3.44%. The lender has a loan-loss reserve of just 33%, compared to a 144% industry average. Management is trying to raise $50 million in capital, which will be dilutive to stockholders, particularly in light of its $166 million capitalization.
It wouldn't be a frontier market without some major casualties.
JAMES ANDERSON is a free-lance writer and professor of English at Lehman College.


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La stagione 2020 del TCR China Touring Car Championship è la quarta edizione del campionato cadetto della coppa del mondo turismo. La competizione, il cui calendario è stato più volte rivisto e posticipato a causa della pandemia di COVID-19 del 2019-2021, è iniziata l'8 agosto a Zhuzhou e terminerà il 22 novembre a Macao.

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To see All uses of "eminent" in The Count of Monte Cristo, please enable javascript.
standing above others in attainment or reputation
While the struggle between day and night lasted, Dantes still doubted; but as soon as the daylight gained the pre-eminence, he saw that he was alone with a corpse.
"Spada knew what these invitations meant; since Christianity, so eminently civilizing, had made progress in Rome, it was no longer a centurion who came from the tyrant with a message, 'Caesar wills that you die.' but it was a legate a latere, who came with a smile on his lips to say from the pope, 'His holiness requests you to dine with him.'
Standing well at court, whether the king regnant was of the older or younger branch, whether the government was doctrinaire liberal, or conservative; looked upon by all as a man of talent, since those who have never experienced a political check are generally so regarded; hated by many, but warmly supported by others, without being really liked by anybody, M. de Villefort held a high position in the magistracy, and maintained his eminence like a Harlay or a Mole.
"Really, sir," retorted the count, "have you attained the eminent situation in which you are, without having admitted, or even without having met with exceptions? and do you never use your eyes, which must have acquired so much finesse and certainty, to divine, at a glance, the kind of man by whom you are confronted?
"Gentlemen," he said, "you will admit that, when arrived at a certain degree of fortune, the superfluities of life are all that can be desired; and the ladies will allow that, after having risen to a certain eminence of position, the ideal alone can be more exalted.
Chapters 63-64 (8% in)
Their number was formidable, now that he had begun to fear, and yet these names, powerful though they were, had often caused him to smile with the same kind of satisfaction experienced by a traveller who from the summit of a mountain beholds at his feet the craggy eminences, the almost impassable paths, and the fearful chasms, through which he has so perilously climbed.
Albert found in his anteroom two guns, with all the accoutrements for hunting; a lofty room on the ground-floor containing all the ingenious instruments the English—eminent in piscatory pursuits, since they are patient and sluggish—have invented for fishing.
There are no more uses of "eminent" in The Count of Monte Cristo.