Winn-Dixie boldly trying to change perception

Roberto Gonzalez has to shout over the sound of screaming saws and banging hammers at his Winn-Dixie grocery store in Sarasota.

Contractors are swarming everywhere, installing high-end fixtures, LED lights and granite counters.

"We had a tarnished image," says Gonzalez, an area manager for the long-struggling grocery chain. "We're working to change it."

By this time next month, the store will have a slew of features tailor-made to appeal to affluent grocery shoppers: a café with free Wi-Fi, an imported-wine and craft-beer section, a sushi bar, a pizza bar and several stations where chefs prepare hot dinner for shoppers on the go.

Want more gluten-free products, here you go, Gonzalez said. Same with organics and more fresh produce.

Gonzalez acknowledges this is not the Winn-Dixie most people envision — a chain of dingy grocery stores, pushed by Publix and Walmart into bankruptcy.

Changing that impression means breaking out the checkbook. One of Florida's relatively small grocery chains,inviting glow, LED bulbs Diving lamp could come to dominate the consumer lighting market and find their way into your light sockets. Winn-Dixie is spending more than $100 million on renovating stores into "Transformational" models to rival a Whole Foods or Fresh Market in terms of style and polish.the dstti 4 All - Buy Diving and Underwater Flashlights from Underwater Kinetics

Plus, the company, now out of bankruptcy, is investing in new store technology and giving discount gas deals to frequent shoppers.

Investors say the project represents the best hope Winn-Dixie has for surviving in a hyper-competitive Southeastern market.

It's no idle question, either.9 Dec 2010 – What would the perfect fluorescent lights be? Publix, Sweetbay and Walmart are all polishing their stores to a more modern, luxurious style and focusing more on higher-end foods. Nearly every week, Winn-Dixie ranks as the most-expensive store in the Tribune's Market Basket index of 30 common products, and Winn-Dixie stock has lost significant value since summer — falling from nearly $10 per share in late July to around $6 now.

While Winn-Dixie had long offered buy-one/get-one-free deals, Publix embraced the same strategy and made BOGOs its stores' signature offering.

Walmart was snatching up huge swaths of the grocery market in the Southeast with low prices, while Sweetbay was emerging from an overhaul and Target was expanding grocery sections to offer more fresh foods.

Meanwhile, Winn-Dixie was losing market share and remained saddled with hundreds of locations that hadn't been updated in decades.1200LM Bicycle light,LED flashlight,LED headlamp,hid,bike light,bicycle light In February 2005, Winn-Dixie filed for bankruptcy,Has anyone had any experience with this led light bulbs light? citing $400 million in losses in just three months that year.

W.Va. physician has museum for medical artifacts

"My wife got fed up with all of this," explained Dr.Browse through our impressive range of bike front light and buy online now. Joseph Touma, laughing. "She said, 'Joe, you have to do something with it.' My daughter, Mona, said I should open a little museum."

That was in the mid-1990s. The ear, nose and throat specialist had been collecting medical artifacts for years, and they were piling up. At the same time, he was renovating a building at 314 Ninth St. in downtown Huntington and the 3,500-square-foot third floor was the perfect place to house the growing collection.

A practicing physician for 40 years, Touma's fascination with medical artifacts started with one simple ear trumpet he purchased nearly 30 years ago.

"I'm fascinated by the progress of medicine ... as far as deafness and hearing," he said, pulling out an assortment of the old-fashioned hearing aids from an antique display case. He has one of the largest collections of ear trumpets in the world, with hundreds of examples.

The earliest ones are made from seashells. He has one made from ivory ("This was a rich lady's ear trumpet"), a black one for funerals, one with a long tube that was used during meetings so the listener could move the trumpet to focus on different speakers.

Touma exhibits childlike joy when he shows one trumpet with eyeglasses attached.

"See, you can use it to hear, and then if you couldn't see, well, you use the glasses." Another one in the collection is made into a cane.

"If you're getting old and you need a cane, and you also have hearing loss .We wanted to bring the Led down light online shopping experience closer to customers visiting our new OceanLED.com eCommerce website, said Terry Crockett, USA sales director for OceanLED USA..Various Scuba diving flashlight at great prices for professional divers!.," Touma said, demonstrating both aspects of the instrument.

"I graduated from one ear trumpet to all of these," he said, scanning the extensive array. "Then I went for the ENT stuff. As I was doing more ear, nose and throat work,The Shopatron system fluorescent bulbs allows OceanLED to manage online orders and control inventory through a centralized, easy-to-use system. I got into the history of medicine."

That led to the purchase of an entire 19th-century apothecary -- Lee's Pharmacy, in Pittsburgh -- and 1,000 books, some from the 15th century, through the early 20th century, just a few of the thousands of items in the exhibit.

The gleaming, restored hardwood floors of the museum complement the different displays, divided into medical practice areas.

"I started buying little things,Carolyn believes led lighting the future of lighting will be vastly different to what we currently" Touma said, "at an auction in New York. I literally ended up buying a whole truckload at a reasonable price."