Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Hurricane Katrina

Commerce with a heart

For some area businesses, the bottom line isn't all about profits. It's to help people like a confetti dealer, real estate agents and aid workers steeped in post-Katrina trauma.

By SHARON L. BOND
Published September 18, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - Boxes of confetti and streamers were ready to ship to Australia, Trinidad and Singapore when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, forcing Ronee C. Holmes to leave her warehouse on Bienville Street.

She, her life partner Jon Stern, family members and two dogs evacuated to the Tampa Bay area, where relatives offered a place to stay.

Last week, Flutter Fetti Fun Factory shipped out its first order from a makeshift production center with several rooms, a borrowed paper cutter and a box strapper on 65th Way N in St. Petersburg.

"We are surviving," Holmes, 57, said last week. She said she had to get back on her feet fast or lose out to competitors.

"I'll be damned if I was going to let all my hard work go under."

Having worked in the confetti business for nine years, Holmes bought Flutter Fetti and its 23 patents in October 2003. She moved the business from Maryland to New Orleans, where she has lived for 25 years, and merged it with her company, Parti Line International.

What remains is unknown.

Holmes has heard varying accounts of how bad the damage is to her factory: under 16 feet of water, under 6 feet of water. It was full of confetti supplies, which would be harmed by heat and humidity even if they did not get wet. She has $2-million in liability and casualty insurance but none for flooding because she was not in a flood zone.

"I don't think the ramifications and impact of how Katrina is going to change our lives has hit us yet," Holmes said.

She also doesn't know what happened to her home near the French Quarter, built in 1841.

Holmes' company has 3,000 customers, including those who supply special effects for concerts, such as those of Paul McCartney, and conventions, like the Democratic and Republican gatherings of last year.

(Holmes said the confetti in the special effects of McCartney's concert Saturday night at the St. Pete Times Forum was from her company.)

Gross receipts for the company totaled $833,000 last year. She was hoping for $1-million this year.

"This is my season," said Holmes of the second half of the year that includes holidays and celebrations. The ultimate is New Year's Eve. Mardi Gras gives her lots of business from supplying floats with streamers to decorating home parties and balls.

"We have products for any kind of celebration: in homes with 8-foot ceilings all way to arena concerts."

These include confetti sticks, strips, streamers, pompoms and other configurations using Flutter Fetti, a patented confetti that streams more and hangs in the air longer, she said. Its pieces are larger than traditional hole-punch confetti.

After Holmes and her family evacuated to the Tampa Bay area, she began looking for work space here. She ended up talking to Gene Hancock, who owns Hancock Printing Equipment in Lutz and sells cutting machines. He told her he had leased a small factory space in St. Petersburg she could rent. He even supplied the cutter and the box strapper.

"He is like an angel fallen on my shoulders," Holmes said.

Hancock, 70, planned to enlarge the bindery operating in the space in St. Petersburg. But when he heard about Holmes' company, he made the space available to her.

"It was an opportunity to help people who have been devastated," he said.

Meanwhile, two of Holmes' workers at the New Orleans plant made their way here from Houston and are grateful to be here. Both young men suffered personal losses.

Holmes' plight is one of many stories of local businesses aiding Katrina victims. Real estate agents at Keller Williams Gulf Coast are adopting agents in the storm's area who have lost homes and offices. And Interstate Transport in St. Petersburg is readying a 53-foot trailer to take supplies to Mississippi.

Keller Williams lost eight offices in the hurricane area, said Ann S. Rogers, operating principal of the three Gulf Coast offices in Seminole and St. Petersburg.

The destroyed offices employed 728 workers.

For 90 days, "the national and regional owners of Keller Williams agreed to pay all the bills of the market centers unable to operate," Rogers, 53, said. That includes staffer salaries.

Offices in unaffected areas will adopt those in the hurricane destruction zone. Individual donations also are being collected, with a recommended gift of $100 per agent. That money will help colleagues harmed by Katrina pay insurance deductibles or other personal needs.

This is not just an outpouring of charity.

"It takes a long time to build up a good staff," Rogers said. "What the company is trying to avoid is people leaving the state and taking their jobs elsewhere. We want to keep the people going until they can move back into their communities."

Tim Higham, chief executive officer of Interstate Transport, already donated the use of six of his company's vehicles and help of his staff to the destruction zone. Yet last Sunday at Riviera Methodist Church, he heard a report from a church relief group that had been to Mississippi. Members talked about the needs of police and sheriff's officers and municipal workers in several towns.

"These guys are out helping everybody else, and their families are home fending for themselves. They are putting the public first," Higham said. "We need to help people who have been helping other people."

Higham, 38, said he decided to donate the use of a 53-foot trailer to haul supplies to Mississippi. He hopes people will donate shrink-wrapped cases of canned goods, clothes that have been sorted and boxed, building materials, cleaning supplies, camp stoves, cooking equipment and small chain saws.

The trailer will be at First United Methodist Church at 212 Third St. N early this week. Before it arrives, people can donate at local United Methodist churches, Higham said.

The trailer will be at the church until Sept. 29, when it will haul supplies to Biloxi and Hattiesburg.

[Last modified September 18, 2005, 02:15:36]