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Whatever happened to ...

Businesses weather many storms

Flooding wreaks havoc on several businesses in 2004. Meanwhile, one man wonders if the general public will ever understand his limericks.

By SHERYL KAY, MICHAEL VAN SICKLER and JOSH ZIMMER
Published December 26, 2004

UNIVERSITY

The owner of Teresa's Food Store ended the year hundreds of thousands of dollars behind as a result of flooding from Hurricane Frances.

Flash floods devastated Teresa's and shops around it on N 15th Street. At fault, in part, was a bad connection between city and county drainage systems.

Store owner Hady Sarsour estimates he lost $160,000 in structural damage and another $60,000 to $80,000 in inventory.

Friends and family worked around the clock to help reopen his store. But now he owes them money, not just thanks.

"It feels good" to reopen, he said. "But I hope business gets back to what it used to be. It just put me in debt, big time."

Sprint MultiMedia, Davenport Services and the Cinnamon Cove apartment complex also took big losses, and Sarsour says the neighborhood has never fully recovered. The 5 p.m. rush isn't what it used to be, he said while watching a trickle of customers make typically small convenience store purchases. There seem to be fewer people.

Like other business owners on N 15th, Sarsour quickly discovered that his insurance policy was useless in this situation because it doesn't cover floods. The area falls outside the flood zone. The federal government offered low-interest loans, not grants. Public works officials with Tampa and Hillsborough County say they will spend $6-million to fix the stormwater system. But those upgrades will take a good two years.

Or, as the merchants see it, at least two more hurricane seasons.

Dale DeBlock should have gotten a bump from newspaper publicity in March over his limerick coffee mugs. Not quite. "As a direct result of the North of Tampa article, I sold two to a guy," the Hunter's Green retiree said recently. "And I already knew him."

DeBlock made another sale to a tennis buddy. It didn't help much that his son, Dale Jr., operates a popular Web site called leoaffairs.com and, on it, displayed a link to the limerick page. Even though 20,000 people visit his son's site every day, DeBlock said he didn't see any more sales.

"I'm riding a dead horse here," DeBlock said. "The feeling I'm getting is that there isn't a market for limericks. How do I know? They're not selling."

His passion for enfolding life's lessons in an infectious "aabba" rhyme scheme doesn't cost him much. He spends about $6 a month to maintain his Web site, www.cafeshops.com/MugswithMorals And it's not like he plunged into the poetry world with hopes of making a fortune. For every $10.99 mug he sells, he only keeps $1.

No, what keeps DeBlock writing these little ditties is an unstoppable urge to share his musings on life by way of the limerick. At 70, he fears this might be his last chance to reach out to an audience.

Check out his thoughts on making a good impression in this limerick he calls "Smileage."

Seek success not with surgeries or guile,

Nor by dressing yourself in high style.

None of these will attract,

Causing folks to react,

As possessing a beautiful smile.

As is his trademark, DeBlock appends a moral at the end of the limerick: "Brighten my day, and you'll capture my heart."

DeBlock's venture isn't limited to coffee mugs. His limericks adorn unsold T-shirts, hooded sweat shirts and tank tops.

He said he'll soon ask gift and card shops to display his mugs. But his hopes are flagging fast.

"What I'm having to face is that my personal tastes aren't in tune with a lot of other people these days," he said. "I'm discouraged. Shucks, if it was half of a percent of the population, that'd be fine."

With each passing month, Winifred Bate-Pope moves farther away from her Hunter's Green kitchen as her shampoo business continues to grow.

The 43-year-old former pharmacist, who developed her Nature's Prescription hair products line with her daughter's dry scalp in mind, has a growing staff and is focusing more on production.

"We're up 20 percent in volume as far as what we mail out, and we're receiving twice the number of phone calls," she said.

A public relations representative helped boost her product's visibility. "She does a lot of writing for us," Bate-Pope said. "That's not my area of expertise."

With inquiries and sales skyrocketing, Bate-Pope said she delegates more but is also working harder.

"I spend a lot of my time preparing orders," she said. And she'll soon have to travel. "Our plan is to target the Southeast region, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, so we can hit more of the professional salons and beauty supply outlets," she said. "And I do plan to do some beauty shows, to make sure the products are being demonstrated properly."

Lately she's been too busy with the marketing effort to invest time and money in research and development. But new products are on the way.

"I've got about six or seven brand new formulas, and we hope to roll those out in 18 to 24 months," she said. "Be on the lookout for a new perm-relaxer."

[Last modified December 25, 2004, 23:08:18]