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Gallery Furniture is launching a new online shopping site on August 7.

The new GalleryFurniture.com online shopping site will feature the store’s full furniture inventory along with an Internet-only section that provides discounts on products not found in Gallery Furniture’s I-45 and Galleria locations.

Gallery Furniture originally invested $1 million into an e-commerce site in 1999 but got rid of it in 2000 after an incident with a hacker wreaked havoc on the company’s banking system, according to a spokesperson for Gallery Furniture.

“We want our online theme to follow our in-store theme: only the best available products at the best prices, utilizing advanced technology to help customers in their purchasing decisions,” said Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale.

Gallery Furniture initially plans to offer its e-commerce site to those within a 200-mile radius of Houston, with plans to expand in the future.

For those shopping in-store, Gallery Furniture will be placing Microsoft Meta Tags that are similar to barcodes on all furniture, allowing customers with compatible smart phones to scan items and instantly be provided with product information.

Gallery Furniture has also secured the right to sell Tempur-Pedic products to its online customers–a first in the Houston area.

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Former Houston Oilers quarterback Warren Moon has dropped back and thrown a deep pass into the world of sports and entertainment marketing.

Moon has opened a new company, Sports 1 Marketing, in Irvine, Calif., and has hired Dave Meltzer, formerly with high profile sports agent Leigh Steinberg to serve as chief executive officer. Moon is president of the firm.

Sports 1 Marketing will offer services for corporate or event clients with athletes and coaches to formulate advertising and sponsorship campaigns.

“Starting this business is something that I’ve been thinking about doing for quite some time, and I am confident that both the timing and the sports business environment are properly aligned,” said Moon.

Moon chose the name Sports 1 to mirror the uniform number he wore as a college football player with the University of Washington and as a professional. He played six seasons with the Canadian Football League’s Edmonton Eskimos before joining the National Football League’s Houston Oilers, where he played from 1984-1993 online payday loans. He retired in 2000 and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005.

Added Meltzer, “I am delighted to be joining forces with one of the greatest players, community activists and businessmen in recent NFL annals,” said Meltzer.

Moon, who had worked as a broadcaster for Seattle Seahawks games last season, signed a deal in April to promote a California energy drink, FITT Energy with Reservatrol, which is featured on the new Sports 1 Marketing Web site.

FITT Energy is made by Who’s Your Daddy Inc. (OTCBB: WYDI), of Mission Viejo, Calif.

Moon can be seen here promoting the product, wearing his Oilers football team uniform.

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WASHINGTON — A brewing Capitol Hill fight pits California winemakers against beer wholesalers and others who are hoping to outflank a landmark Supreme Court decision.

One hundred and seven lawmakers, nearly one-fourth of the House of Representatives, support legislation that would make it easier for states to hinder direct shipments of alcohol. The bill in effect takes the fizz out of a 2005 Supreme Court decision that said some bans on direct shipments violated the Constitution.

The bill’s supporters say they want to bolster state alcohol enforcement powers.

"With (the bill), Congress is taking an important step toward ending the erosion of the states’ ability to regulate alcohol," the president of the National Beer Wholesalers Association, Craig Purser, declared when the bill was introduced earlier this year.

The bill’s opponents say it would benefit booze distributors at the expense of wineries and consumers.

"It really threatens the progress that’s been made on direct shipping of wine," U.S. Rep. George Radanovich, R-Calif., said Friday. "It puts into jeopardy all of the work we’ve done."

Himself a former winemaker, Radanovich co-chairs the 250-member Congressional Wine Caucus. The caucus supports direct shipping and will play a big role in what happens next.

Realistically, the legislation to complicate direct shipments has little to no chance in the remaining months of this Congress.

Its chief author, Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., is a lame duck. Its opponents include key lieutenants of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who often champions her home state’s wine industry. Two months after Delahunt quietly introduced his bill, a Senate version is nowhere in sight.

Politically, though, the bill signals a resurgence in the long-running struggle that pits different elements of the alcohol business against one another.

"We have to be diligent anytime a bill like this takes shape," Radanovich said. "We have to be sure we can block it."

Direct shipments cut out the distributors and middlemen, allowing wineries to sell straight to customers who may have visited in person or browsed via the Internet. Modest-sized wineries, in particular, have considered direct shipping a retail boon.

"It’s definitely helped; there’s no question about it," Patrick Campbell, the owner of Laurel Glen Winery in California’s Sonoma County, said Friday. "The fact that you can ship direct to some markets creates an opening, and that scares the hell out of the distributors."

After a protracted legal campaign, the Supreme Court in the case called Granholm v. Heald struck down laws that banned out-of-state direct shipments while permitting those from in-state wineries. The court concluded that the state laws violated the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which prohibits states from erecting barriers against one another.

Driven in part by subsequent legal or legislative action, 38 states now permit some form of direct shipping. Missouri and Illinois both allow direct shipping of wine, but with limits to the number of cases per winery.

Enter the Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness Act.

As introduced April 15, the legislation significantly raises the legal hurdles for a successful challenge to a state’s direct wine-shipment restriction. The bill declares that a state’s alcohol control law "shall be upheld" unless the challengers can prove, essentially, that the law serves no purpose.

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Federal Reserve policymakers are worried that the economic recovery may lose steam going forward, despite recent moderate improvements, according to minutes from their recent policy meeting released Tuesday.

Though the latest data suggest an uptick in economic activity, Fed members believe that some sectors of the economy could stifle overall growth, the minutes from the March 16 meeting said.

"While participants saw incoming information as broadly consistent with continued strengthening of economic activity, they also highlighted a variety of factors that would be likely to restrain the overall pace of recovery, especially in light of the waning effects of fiscal stimulus and inventory rebalancing over coming quarters," the minutes said.

But Fed policymakers indicated that they could raise rates as soon as they see continued signs of life in the economy, according to the minutes.

The minutes indicated that Fed members believed the central bank’s policy of "exceptionally low rates" for "an extended period" is explicitly contingent on the evolution of the economy rather than on the passage of any fixed amount of calendar time." The central bank’s current guidance does not limit the Fed from tightening or maintaining its monetary policy, they said.

Fed members previously said that the use of "extended period" referred to three or four meetings, but the new explanation suggests that the Fed’s language "could legitimately be used until just before tightening is set to start, and thus does not convey much information about the likely start date of Fed tightening," said Barclays Capital economist Dean Maki in a research note.

At the meeting, the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee continued to hold the target for the key interest rate, the federal funds rate, between 0% and 0.25%, and repeated that economic conditions are likely "to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period." The key rate is used as a benchmark for how much banks charge consumers and businesses for loans.

For the second straight meeting, Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig voted against the decision to use that language. In the minutes, he reiterated that it would be more appropriate for the Fed to promise "a low level of the federal funds rate for some time."

Such a change, Hoenig said, would allow the Fed to increase that benchmark rate modestly sooner rather than later and avoid "the buildup of future financial imbalances and increase the risk of to longer-run macroeconomic and financial stability."

But Hoenig was alone in his view of altering the language, and the Fed maintained a cautious in its view of the current economic situation.

"Nobody else jumped on the ‘We need to tighten’ bandwagon, and that says a lot," said John Canally, economist at LPL Financial. "There’s not a lot of energy on the committee to raise rates."

Since the last meeting, most economic data, with the exception of the reports on the housing sector, have met or beat expectations, and the Fed will have to acknowledge that, Canally said.

At the meeting, a number of policymakers "pointed out that the economic recovery could not be sustained over time without a substantial pickup in job creation, which they still anticipated but had not yet become evident in the data."

Last week, however, the Labor Department said the economy gained 162,000 jobs in March, more than any other month in the last three years.

Fed members also highlighted concerns about the housing market, where gains are "leveling off" despite government support such as the homebuyer tax credit, and said commercial and industrial real estate markets continue to weaken.

"The housing market is still tenuous. The last thing the Fed wants to do is torpedo any improvements," Canally said. "The Fed does not want to raise rates and be responsible for squashing the recovery and killing the housing market."

But Canally said the market will be listening closely to comments from Fed chairman Ben Bernanke set to be delivered Wednesday in Dallas and Thursday in Washington to understand how the central bank will weigh the recent firm economic data in future policy meetings.  

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Former U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall — uncle of U.S. Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, father of another senator and patriarch of one of the West's leading political families — died Saturday at his Santa Fe home. He was 90.

Stewart Udall was Interior secretary from 1961 to 1968 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Previously, he was a congressman from Arizona.

Udall helped shape federal policies that have steered development of the West for half a century.

He was involved in crafting the Wilderness Act, under which millions of acres of the West are preserved in their natural state, and an early version of the Endangered Species Act. He also presided over a major expansion of the national park system, including sprawling Canyonlands National Park near Moab, Utah.

But he also presided over an unprecedented period of development of the West's water resources, including completion of Glen Canyon Dam, which created Lake Powell on the Colorado River.

After leaving office, he led legal battles on behalf of American Indian miners and others sickened by uranium mining and above-ground nuclear tests.

He was the brother of Mark Udall's father, the late Morris "Mo" Udall, who served 15 terms in Congress and ran for president; and was the father of U payday loan no faxing.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M.

In a statement, Mark Udall called his uncle "a great public servant, and a wonderful writer and storyteller. He was passionate about conservation, and he was a champion of Native peoples. All those who care about our national parks and the environment will miss his voice.

"Beyond his life in public service, he was the patriarch of our family, a great mentor and role model," the senator added. "The Udall family will not be the same without him."

Current Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a former Colorado senator, called Udall "one of the greatest secretaries of the Interior in my lifetime … a pioneer and a visionary in protecting America's natural resources and cultural heritage."

"Stewart Udall left an indelible mark on this nation and inspired countless Americans who will continue his fight for clean air, clean water and to maintain our many natural treasures," President Barack Obama said in a statement.

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New Zealand house prices climbed for a fifth month in February, fueled by increased demand for property in the nation’s largest cities as the economy emerges from a recession.

Prices rose 5.5 percent from a year earlier, following a 4.4 percent annual gain in January, according to a Quotable Value New Zealand Ltd. index. Prices in the 17 largest cities rose 7.3 percent, the Wellington-based government valuation agency said in an e-mailed report.

Further gains in house prices may be curbed by the prospect of higher interest rates and changes to taxation of investment property that will be announced in the May 20 budget. Prices in rural areas fell in February and the pace of increases in provincial cities and some urban areas is slowing, said Glenda Whitehead, valuation manager at Quotable Value.

“Values in the last few months have flattened in many areas,” she said. “The market remains patchy and buyers cautious.”

Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard said on Jan. 28 he expected to raise the official cash rate from a record-low 2.5 percent around the middle of the year.

Property sales and listings of houses for sale improved in February as the market approaches its busiest time of the year in late summer, Whitehead said.

“We expect values to stabilize over the coming months, reflecting the ongoing uncertainty around employment, pending interest-rate rises and continued tight lending criteria,” she said. “We may see more certainty in the market after the budget announcement.”

Unemployment

Damping consumer confidence, New Zealand’s jobless rate rose to a 10-year high of 7.3 percent in the fourth quarter. Banks are taking a careful approach to lending and are requesting fresh valuations where the borrower has a low deposit, Whitehead said.

The number of home-loan approvals in the three months ended Feb. 26 slumped 20 percent from a year earlier, according to central bank figures published March 3.

A separate report prepared by the Real Estate Institute last month said that house prices fell for a second month in January. The institute releases February figures on March 12.

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AMSTERDAM–Dutch sports car maker Spyker denied Sunday it had plans to jointly bid for General Motors’ Saab with Luxembourg investment firm Genii Capital.

German WirtschaftsWoche business weekly, in abstracts of a story to be published on Jan. 18, said the two companies, which have been trying individually to clinch a deal to buy the money-losing Swedish automaker, had now teamed up.

Spyker chief executive Victor Muller, in a reply to Reuters via text message, responded "No," when asked if Spyker was in contact with Genii about a joint bid for Saab or had changed its strategy.

Genii is backed by Formula 1 mogul Bernie Ecclestone.

Lars Carlstrom, who is coordinating the bid for Saab by Genii Capital and Ecclestone, told Reuters there had been some talks with Spyker’s Muller last week but that he could not confirm nor deny anything related to a joint bid.

GM Europe spokesman Stephan Weinmann said GM was in talks about Saab but he declined to comment whether discussions were ongoing with one or several bidders.

GM said on Monday it would move ahead with closing Saab down. On Tuesday, it appointed two supervisors to oversee a wind-down, though it said it would continue to consider "several purchase proposals it has received for Saab."

The magazine’s abstract said: "According to WirtschaftsWoche information, Spyker Cars and Genii Capital have been in contact in order to make a last-second joint offer." It did not give other details.

On Tuesday, Muller said GM’s decision on Saab was a matter of "days not weeks."

Meanwhile, more than 2,000 Saab drivers gathered in their cars in the Swedish brand’s hometown Sunday to show support for the iconic mark.

"It’s hard to know exactly how many cars there were, but an estimate we’ve done puts the number at 2,500," Claes Robertsson, the head of Saab Turbo Club of Sweden, a group of Saab admirers, told AFP.

Robertsson said both Saab employees and brand enthusiasts had attended the rally, in which drivers from Germany, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Britain also took part.

Swedish news agency TT said the demonstration started at the Saab museum in its southwestern Swedish hometown of Trollhaettan and ended at the Saab factory.

According to police, the four-kilometre stretch was entirely filled by Saab cars, TT reported.

In the Netherlands, more than 500 Dutch Saab lovers rallied.

Saab, which employs 3,400 people in Sweden, is one of four major brands being sold by GM as part of a massive restructuring that began in 2005 and accelerated last year when the largest U.S. automaker went bankrupt.

Analysts have warned some 8,000 jobs could be lost with Saab’s closure.

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Antitrust enforcers have intensified their probe of Monsanto Co.’s dominance in genetically modified seeds, ordering the company to turn over information related to its Roundup Ready genetic trait in soybeans.

Monsanto disclosed Thursday that the Department of Justice issued a civil investigative demand, a formal request for information, which follows an informal probe begun by government lawyers last year. Company spokeswoman Kelli Powers declined to specify what information is being sought.

Creve Coeur-based Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, said it has provided access to millions of pages of documents and will continue to cooperate with the government.

"We believe our business practices are fair, pro-competitive and in compliance with the law," Monsanto Chief Deputy Counsel Scott Partridge said in a statement.

The Justice Department’s probe of Monsanto coincides with claims by the company’s chief rival, Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., and other critics who say Monsanto’s leading position in the multibillion-dollar biotech seed market and business practices are stifling innovation that could benefit farmers.

The Justice Department has shown an increasing interest in the genetically modified seed business, leading to this week’s demand to Monsanto for additional information.

Thomas L. Greaney, a law professor at St. Louis University, said civil investigative demands like those received by Monsanto represent the second step in an antitrust investigation and are used by government lawyers to obtain specific documents, depositions and internal memoranda that the company wouldn’t voluntarily hand over and that could be useful in preparing an antitrust case.

"They don’t do it lightly," said Greaney, who spent 10 years at the Justice Department, including a stint as assistant chief in charge of antitrust matters in health care.

It does not suggest, however, that such a lawsuit is imminent, he said.

Thursday marked the first time the Justice Department has confirmed an investigation of possible anti-competitive practices in the seed industry. Department spokeswoman Gina Talamona declined to be more specific about the scope of the investigation or to name the companies involved.

However, Pioneer’s parent, DuPont, acknowledged that it received a civil investigative demand from the Justice Department, spokesman Dan Turner said.

And two other big seed companies, Dow AgroSciences and Syngenta, have also spoken with the department regarding the probe, spokesmen said.

Peter Carstensen, a University of Wisconsin law professor who previously worked as a staff attorney at the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, said the government’s demand for information is a sign that it has "ratcheted up its investigation" of Monsanto.

Carstensen is an expert witness for a farmer being sued by Monsanto and believes there’s a valid antitrust argument to be made against the seed giant need a personal loan with bad credit.

Still, the intersection of intellectual property rights and antitrust law makes any case a complex one that could be difficult for the government to prove in court.

"There are going to be some very hard legal questions with respect to how much right does Monsanto have to use its patent rights in a way that is exempt from antitrust review," he said.

Allegations by Monsanto’s critics focus mainly on the company’s biotech soybeans, which are genetically modified to resist Roundup and other glyphosate-based weed killers. The technology allows farmers to spray entire fields with herbicide without killing crops.

Today, the Roundup Ready genetic trait is found in more than 90 percent of the U.S. soybean crop, including seeds sold by DuPont’s Pioneer unit and other competitors. Monsanto collects a technology fee for licensing the trait.

DuPont has complained to the government that its agricultural subsidiary Pioneer is not being allowed to develop seeds that combine Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready genetic trait with a separate Pioneer-developed trait for herbicide resistance.

"The ag biotech trait market is firmly in the grip of a single supplier, acting as a bottleneck to competition and choice," DuPont said in formal comments submitted Friday to the Justice Department.

The companies have waged a legal battle since last spring when Monsanto sued DuPont for patent infringement related to their licensing agreement. DuPont countersued weeks later, claiming that Monsanto is using anti-competitive tactics to preserve its market share. The case is pending in U.S. District Court in St. Louis.

Monsanto is currently trying to persuade seed companies to switch to its new, higher priced biotech soybean called Roundup Ready 2 Yield.

DuPont has alleged that Monsanto is trying to force independent seed companies and farmers to make the switch to eliminate the potential for competition from a generic alternative.

To diffuse criticism, Monsanto sent farm groups and seed companies a letter on Dec. 15 stating that farmers would be allowed to continue growing first-generation Roundup Ready soybeans after the herbicide resistance trait patent expires in 2014.

Monsanto said the Justice Department’s demand for information seeks confirmation that it will follow through on that promise.

The Monsanto investigation is part of a broad look at the state of competition in agriculture by President Barack Obama’s administration.

The Justice Department and Department of Agriculture last year announced a nationwide series of workshops in 2010 to hear farmers concerns.

The first session will be held in Iowa on March 12 and focus on issues related to row crops, including biotech seed.

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Colorado once again ranks high among the states in a report on business climate — this one from the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, a lobbying and policy group.

The SBE Council's "Small Business Survival Index 2009" rates the states on their public policy climates for small business and entrepreneurship, particularly on their tax structures. It ranks Colorado No. 8, up from 10th last year and 11th the year before.

Besides taxes, factors in the ranking — released Tuesday — include regulatory costs, government spending, property rights policies, crime rate and health care and energy costs.

"Most politicians talk a good game when it comes to small business, but their actions don’t often match their rhetoric," SBE Council chief economist Raymond Keating said in a statement. " … Small businesses, of course, drive innovation, economic growth and job creation. If we want to get our economy back on a solid, robust growth track, then we need pro-entrepreneur policies at the federal, state and local levels.”

The council assigned index numbers ranging from 25.693 for South Dakota — deemed the friendliest state for small business — to 84.795 to the District of Columbia — deemed the least friendly.

Colorado's index is 48.250.

Among the Centennial State's individual rankings in the report are:

• 8th for lowest top corporate income tax rates.

• 10th for lowest top corporate capital gains tax rates.

• 15th for lowest state and local sales and excise taxes.

• 18th for lowest electric utility costs.

• 20th for fewest state and local government employees.

• 20th for lowest state and local property taxes.

• 22nd for lowest crime rate.

• 28th for lowest state and local government spend, 2006-07.

• 36th for fewest "health insurance mandates."

Rated ahead of Colorado as most friendly to small business are South Dakota, Nevada, Texas, Wyoming, Washington, Florida and South Carolina.

New the bottom along with D.C. are New Jersey, California and New York.

The Oakton, Va.-based SBE Council is a business advocacy group that says it "works to educate elected officials, policy makers, business leaders and the public to advance initiatives that enhance the environment for entrepreneurship, business start-up and growth."

The group has been visible recently in its opposition to the health-care reform measure that has passed the U.S. House and another that is before the U.S. Senate, calling them overly burdensome to business.

Click here to download the SBEC's summary of its report in PDF format.

And click here for the full report.

In September, Colorado was ranked in fourth place by Forbes.com as among the best states for business in a report assessing business costs, labor supply, regulatory environment, economic climate, growth prospects and quality of life. State officials have been crowing about that ranking ever since. (DBJ report.)

Also in September, the Washington-based Tax Foundation said Colorado has the 13th most business-friendly tax system in the country. (DBJ report.)

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European exports to China, the world’s fastest-growing major economy, fell 5.3 percent in the first half of the year as the euro’s appreciation made the goods from the region less competitive abroad.

The value of exports from the 27-nation European Union to China declined to 37.4 billion euros ($55.8 billion) from 39.5 billion euros in the year-earlier period, the EU’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. EU imports from China fell 8.4 percent to 102.7 billion euros, narrowing the trade deficit to 65.3 billion euros from 72.7 billion euros.

European officials have called on China to let the yuan strengthen and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet will travel to China this weekend to discuss the matter cheap payday loan. The euro has gained 15 percent against the Chinese currency in the past year, fueling complaints that yuan’s peg to the weakening U.S. dollar is creating an unfair advantage for China’s exporters.

China is the EU’s second-largest trading partner, after the U.S., with machinery and vehicles accounting for about 60 percent of European goods shipped to the Asian nation. The value of German exports to China decreased to 16.2 billion euros in the first half from 16.8 billion a year earlier, according to today’s report.

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