Every Little Bit Helps

Cheryl Clarke used to boast to her husband Chris about saving money on groceries with double coupons and manufacturers’ rebates. “He was kind of patronizing,” she said. “I thought, I’ll show you.”

Well, show him she did. The El Cajon woman, who does much of her shopping at Vons, opened a bank account three years ago and poured into it all her savings on rebates, coupons and any extra money that was left over after she shopped for groceries each week. Last January, she bought a used 1986 Hyundai with the $4,000 she amassed.

She wrote Vons Cos. President William S. Davila to tell him about it, and now Vons is featuring Clarke’s coupons-into-car testimonial in a radio ad.

Here Comes Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart, the fast-growing Arkansas discounter famous for blowing away slow-moving competitors, might be considering opening as many as 200 stores in California, according to a trade report.

Mass Market Retailers said such a presence would make Wal-Mart the state’s largest retail chain. Wal-Mart, whose vast store network now extends only as far west as Arizona, has announced plans for its first eight California stores to open next year.

Target Stores, an upscale discount chain owned by Dayton Hudson of Minneapolis, possibly is the state’s largest retailer, with an estimated $2 billion in annual sales. The chain has 99 stores in California and is considering other locations. “But we’re not likely to double in size,” said spokesman George Hite.

Isn’t Anybody Interested?

The National Science Foundation is giving a two-day seminar next week in Los Angeles but fears no one will come. The NSF sent out 70,000 notices of Federal High Tech ‘90, the annual conference at which the foundation, the Defense Department and other Washington agencies tell local businesses how they can better compete for government research and development contracts. But this year NSF has received only 100 acceptances, where 700 responses were typical in other years.

So now NSF is in a panic to get word out about the conference, to be held Oct. 10 to 12 at the Biltmore Hotel. With $67 billion in federal R&D; contracts to talk about, the foundation doesn’t think that its invitations are being rejected. Rather it blames the Post Office (doesn’t everybody) for being slow to deliver the bulk mail.

Write Checks, Save Animals

Endangered species are making more money than the whales. At least in Bank of America’s series of socially conscious designer checks.

Two years ago, the bank offered a popular whale design among its custom checks and began to send 50 cents for each check order, and the same for each checkbook cover sold, to the Marine Mammal Fund and the Monterey Bay Aquarium--a total of $76,000.

Besides the endangered-species model, they now offer a pets check, with contributions going to Guide Dogs for the Blind and the SPCA Hearing Dog Program, and plan a similar campaign to promote literacy beginning in November.

California endangered species featured are the San Joaquin kit fox, the bald eagle, sandhill crane, bighorn sheep and sea otter.

“We want cute,” laughs bank spokeswoman Shirley Norton. Actually, the Nature Conservancy, recipient of $83,000 so far from the program, chose the beasts themselves, passing over such less-attractive scarce species as the humpback sucker (a fish) and the San Francisco garter snake.