Customer Base

THERE IS little to celebrate around Old Town Mall. The pedestrian shopping street just six blocks northeast of City Hall won revitalization awards in the 1970s, but is again in dire straits. Street lights are vandalized; retail vacancies abound. Among the best performers is a store that sells liquor as its main product and handles bail bonds as a sideline. Business failures around Old Town Mall are particularly alarming. A Gay Street auto-parts store closed two months ago; a longtime paint store and a lounge are among recent casualties on Hillen Street.

Helping companies save money on postage can bring in the big bucks. Baltimore-based Three Dog Logistics picks up mail from clients with high volumes, "commingles" it with other client mail going to the same ZIP code and delivers it closer to the end destination to qualify for a U.S. Postal Service discount. The company made the Inc. 5000 list of fast-growing private companies last year - again - because revenue grew nearly 150 percent from 2008 to 2011, to about $12 million. "We've been on the Inc. 5000 for three years in a row," said John Kennedy, the company's CEO. "And we actually might make the Inc. again this year.

Bethesda-based Savant Corp. said yesterday that it has struck a potentially lucrative partnership deal with Sybase Inc., one of the largest U.S. makers of software for business applications.Under the deal, Sybase gets exclusive rights to privately held Savant's pioneering computer program that can alert information technology managers to database problems and diagnose them.Sybase gets the right to sell the program, named Q Diagnostic Center, to its existing customers without paying Savant a royalty.

Percy Nicholson, a retired co-owner of two West Baltimore cleaning establishments where he cared for the clothing of African-American performers who played the fabled Royal Theatre, died Monday of heart failure at Manor Care Falls Road. The Ashburton resident was 92. The son of a truck driver and a housekeeper, Mr. Nicholson was born in Baltimore and raised on West Lanvale Street. He was a 1939 graduate of George Washington Carver Vocational High School. In 1946, he went to work at Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Sparrows Point plant, where he worked in the open-hearth furnace until retiring in 1983.

Gene Logic Inc., a marketer of genetic information used by drug researchers, said yesterday that it has agreed to acquire TherImmune Research Corp. for $52 million in cash and stock. The Gaithersburg-based company said the acquisition will broaden its customer base that now consists primarily of large pharmaceutical companies. Privately held TherImmune, also of Gaithersburg, handles drug discovery experiments, animal studies and early-stage clinical trials under contracts with small and medium-size biotechnology companies.

In a partnership that will more than quadruple its customer base, Annapolis-based iJET Travel Intelligence said yesterday that it is combining services with global risk consulting company Kroll Inc. As part of the deal, Kroll will move its intelligence division, now housed in Vienna, Va., to iJET's Maryland offices, and the two companies will merge their lists of clients. The companies are deciding how many of the dozen Kroll employees will make the move, officials said. iJET will provide round-the-clock health, political, safety and other advisories to overseas travelers.

At Digi-Data, repetition is a good thing. The company, whose founder died six years ago, is finding a new niche for itself in technology focusing on large-capacity digital storage equipment called Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID systems. After four years of developing a larger and faster RAID system -- one that its executives hope will help the company expand and find its share of the $20 billion global digital storage market -- Digi-Data is ready to ship its systems to partners for testing.

Men's clothier Jos. A. Bank said Monday morning that it is entering the factory outlet business, opening five stores by the end of this fiscal year. If the five stores perform well, the company will open more in the future. There is the potential to open 50 to 75 factory stores in the U.S., R. Neal Black, president and CEO of Jos. A. Bank said in a statement. The company now has seven clearance outlet stores where it sells overstock from its full-priced stores. The company has developed new merchandise to sell in the newest stores.

Helping companies save money on postage can bring in the big bucks. Baltimore-based Three Dog Logistics picks up mail from clients with high volumes, "commingles" it with other client mail going to the same ZIP code and delivers it closer to the end destination to qualify for a U.S. Postal Service discount. The company made the Inc. 5000 list of fast-growing private companies last year - again - because revenue grew nearly 150 percent from 2008 to 2011, to about $12 million. "We've been on the Inc. 5000 for three years in a row," said John Kennedy, the company's CEO. "And we actually might make the Inc. again this year.

Ciena Corp. of Linthicum said yesterday that it has won a contract to supply its telecommunications equipment to a Japanese Internet company, Crosswave Communications Inc.The deal marks the latest step in Ciena's effort to broaden and internationalize its customer base. The company had been reliant on two U.S. telephone companies -- Sprint Corp. and WorldCom Inc., now MCI WorldCom -- for nearly all of its business, and that narrow focus helped send Ciena into a financial dive last year.In its bid to rebound, Ciena has landed contracts with other communications companies, including several deals with Japanese and European carriers.

Men's clothier Jos. A. Bank said Monday morning that it is entering the factory outlet business, opening five stores by the end of this fiscal year. If the five stores perform well, the company will open more in the future. There is the potential to open 50 to 75 factory stores in the U.S., R. Neal Black, president and CEO of Jos. A. Bank said in a statement. The company now has seven clearance outlet stores where it sells overstock from its full-priced stores. The company has developed new merchandise to sell in the newest stores.

As consumers reap the benefits of growing services like on-demand television and free telephone calls over the Internet, one local company may be a less obvious profiteer: Ciena Corp. The Linthicum-based telecommunications equipment company rode the technology wave in the 1990s, dazzling Wall Street with an initial public offering in February 1997 that gave Ciena the highest first-day value at that time for a venture-backed startup. But when the tech bubble burst in 2000, it wasn't long before Ciena, too, started to feel pain.

BALTIMORE is raising taxes, seeking the kind of revenue shot dreamt of by sales outfits everywhere. But what makes Mayor Martin O'Malley believe he'll score with price increases when U.S. Cellular, General Motors, Gateway and numerous other merchants have come to grief? Baltimore at its economic core is a vendor of municipal services, subject to the same laws of competition, supply and demand as any company. At a time when consumers respond to price increases like an Atkins dieter being offered a Twinkie, the risks from O'Malley's gambit aren't simply political.

Gene Logic Inc., a marketer of genetic information used by drug researchers, said yesterday that it has agreed to acquire TherImmune Research Corp. for $52 million in cash and stock. The Gaithersburg-based company said the acquisition will broaden its customer base that now consists primarily of large pharmaceutical companies. Privately held TherImmune, also of Gaithersburg, handles drug discovery experiments, animal studies and early-stage clinical trials under contracts with small and medium-size biotechnology companies.

At Digi-Data, repetition is a good thing. The company, whose founder died six years ago, is finding a new niche for itself in technology focusing on large-capacity digital storage equipment called Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID systems. After four years of developing a larger and faster RAID system -- one that its executives hope will help the company expand and find its share of the $20 billion global digital storage market -- Digi-Data is ready to ship its systems to partners for testing.

Provident Bankshares Corp. intends to finish the year in a growth spurt - adding six bank branches to its network between now and the end of December in a push that highlights its strategy of operating inside grocery stores or other types of retail locations. The six new Provident branches - along with one in Rosedale that opened Saturday - will bring the bank's total locations to 109. The growth wave will spill over into 2003, with Provident planning to add 12 to 15 branches next year, bank officials said.

MBNA Corp., the former credit-card subsidiary of MNC Financial Inc., received some welcome news yesterday as Standard & Poor's Corp. upgraded its rating on the certificates of deposit issued by MBNA's major banking unit.S&P, citing a healthy customer base and strong earnings at MBNA America Bank N.A., raised the bank's rating to triple-B-plus from double-B on CDs of more than a year's duration. CDs of a year or less were upgraded to A-2 from single-B.MBNA had been on S&P's CreditWatch with positive implications since Feb. 11, just weeks after the company was spun off in a public stock offering.

Columbia-based Sequoia Software Inc. braved a brutal IPO market yesterday, raising $32 million in its initial public offering. Shares took a 25 percent bounce on the first day of trading, opening at $8 and closing at $10.0625. The company had trimmed back the pricing of its shares before the offering in the face of waning investor enthusiasm for new technology issues."We're thrilled with the reception we got, given the environment," said Sequoia Software Chief Executive Officer Richard C. Faint Jr. "We got a full offering out the door even though it's a very difficult market for IPOs."

In a partnership that will more than quadruple its customer base, Annapolis-based iJET Travel Intelligence said yesterday that it is combining services with global risk consulting company Kroll Inc. As part of the deal, Kroll will move its intelligence division, now housed in Vienna, Va., to iJET's Maryland offices, and the two companies will merge their lists of clients. The companies are deciding how many of the dozen Kroll employees will make the move, officials said. iJET will provide round-the-clock health, political, safety and other advisories to overseas travelers.

Corvis Corp. announced yesterday that it has signed an agreement to buy Dorsal Networks, a privately held undersea optical network provider, for nearly $90 million in stock. Corvis, which sells mainly land-based telecommunications equipment, offered 40 million shares of common stock for the company, excluding a 3 percent stake Corvis already had in Dorsal. Corvis officials said the move would allow the company to nearly double its market opportunities by moving full force into the $6 billion undersea transport equipment industry.