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How two U.S. entrepreneurs are selling Chinese fashion to the post-Tiananmen generation.

BEIJING (Fortune Small Business) — It’s a hot august afternoon in Beijing, and student Li Yanan is shopping with a friend at the Joy City mall, in the city’s Xicheng district. The mall offers plenty of Western brand-name stores — Quiksilver, Levi’s, French Connection — all looking much as they do in other malls around the world. But Li, 20, is drawn to the only store displaying a large slogan printed in Chinese characters. YOUR OWN STYLE, it reads. Within seconds, Li is inside trying on a garish pink trucker’s hat.

The chain, called Eno, is almost as unusual as the headgear. Founded by transplanted American entrepreneurs Renee Hartmann and Tor Petersen in 2006, it is one of the first brand-name retailers to sell hip, urban streetwear designed by and for young Chinese. That makes it stand out in a market dominated by foreign brands and local manufacturers that specialize in copying them.

“We wanted to create a brand focused 100% on China,” Hartmann says.

Both she and Petersen saw a sea change in the world’s most populous country — the rise of a generation of young adults who wanted to stand out rather than blend in. Like Li, they weren’t born at the time of the Tiananmen Square student uprising in June 1989 — or are too young to remember it. Deng Xiaoping is a distant memory. China has been more capitalist than communist for most of their lives.

Today’s Chinese 15- to 24-year-olds — over 220 million of them — also have a lot more money to spend than their parents ever did. Adjusted for inflation, the annual per capita disposable income of city dwellers rose by an average of 7.2% a year between 1978 and 2007, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics. In 2008 it was more than 15,700 yuan (about $2,300).

And even in a down economy this generation remains eager to spend. Li’s parents both work for a logistics services firm and give her an allowance that funds all of her purchases. “Our parents always wanted to save money, to have a steady, boring life,” Li says through a translator. “We have more options.”
Learning to let go

It’s one thing to see this kind of change happening all around you; it’s another to cash in on it. Hartmann and Petersen had no experience in fashion design. Petersen, 40, is a tall Yankee with a shaved head who speaks fluent Mandarin and spent eight years as a manufacturing and marketing executive for Nike (NKE, Fortune 500) China. Hartmann, 34, was an investor relations consultant who worked with companies going public in the U.S. and Hong Kong.

They met when Petersen was scouting for a CFO with knowledge of Chinese business law to join Eno during its incubation period; Hartmann fit the bill. Over the course of 2005, the outspoken pair convinced each other they could tap China’s budding creative community to generate winning, youth-friendly designs.

So far their strategy seems to be working. Three years after its launch, Eno boasts 60 employees (including five designers), six stores, three franchises and shelf space in more than 20 department stores across China. In 2008 sales topped $1 million — or 430 times the average disposable income. The company says its revenues are set to double this year, and it expects to turn a small profit.

To stay profitable and compete with a growing number of homegrown urban fashion brands in China, Eno must perfect its ability to read the rapidly changing tastes of Chinese youth. And that may be tough for a company that doesn’t have a designer at the helm.

From the beginning Eno was an unlikely enterprise that took its fair share of missteps. Initially conceived as a sportswear brand, Eno was born at Zou Marketing, a Shanghai boutique that Petersen and two other Nike China veterans founded to market sports brands and events. But it soon became clear that China’s sportswear market was already oversaturated by Nike and Adidas, as well as such Chinese brands as Li Ning and Anta.

So Petersen and Hartmann turned their attention to the nascent streetwear industry.

“Five years ago there wasn’t one,” recalls Zou Marketing co-founder Terry Rhoads. What if they could create China’s answer to Urban Outfitters (URBN)? With a $5 million investment from Shanghai venture capital firm Chengwei Ventures, Hartmann and Petersen decided to start with the low-hanging fruit of the fashion world: T-shirts.

They quickly established three sources for Eno’s designs: collaborations with local artists and musicians, online competitions in which users would submit designs and vote their favorite T-shirt graphics into production, and an internal design team.

At first Petersen was responsible for directing his staff designers. He would announce a brief or theme and work closely with the creative team to refine their designs into something that satisfied his tastes. But by April this year, he had to admit that it wasn’t working: The designers were struggling to meet the briefs he came up with. Some of his culture-specific themes, such as “preppy” or “Mardi Gras,” tended to get lost in translation. And Eno’s customers seemed less than thrilled by the results.

“We were losing the passion of our designers in the process,” says Petersen. “It felt like I was forcing a brief down their throats.”

So Petersen made the designers responsible for coming up with concepts and pitching them to him. His creative role would become more hands-off, which the two founders soon realized was a logical step. “After all,” Hartmann points out drily, “we’re not Chinese kids.”

The first collection to emerge from this new system was Eno Classic, a series of T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts adorned with variations on an abstract logo created by 27-year-old designer Feng Feng. Two weeks after the collection hit stores, Petersen says, those designs were selling far better than discounted items from Eno’s spring collection, which included a tube dress adorned with the mangled English “Not so enocent” and a T-shirt that sprinkled beads and sequins around the word Celebrate!

Eno found a breakout hit with a series of environmentally themed shirts. The design used the Chinese character for forest, which consists of the character for tree written three times. “It was like three trees make a forest, the idea being that you just have to do a little bit and you can make a difference,” Hartmann says.

The design went against everything Hartmann thought she knew about Chinese fashion preferences. “The conventional wisdom here is that Chinese people don’t like having Chinese characters on their T-shirts, that they only like English,” Hartmann says. “But that T-shirt sold like crazy no matter what color we put it in. We didn’t expect that.”

The bottom-up approach is appreciated by designers like Feng, who had previously worked at two smaller streetwear brands in Shenzhen and Shanghai. “Eno provides a wider platform for designers to do what they want to do,” Feng says through a translator. “It’s almost democratic.”
Making the scene

That wasn’t the only way Petersen and Hartmann strove to get closer to their customer. In manufacturing they took their lead from so-called “fast fashion” retailers such as H&M and Zara, which emphasize bringing new designs to market as rapidly as possible. Both companies recently opened stores in China.

Like its larger rivals, Eno is developing a supply chain that will allow it to get small batches of new designs out quickly. The company already uses recent sales data to reorder popular styles on a weekly basis. “You allow the consumer to tell you which products are working,” Petersen says.

Currently, Eno can take a T-shirt design from concept to store floor in three weeks. Reordered styles usually reach the store within a week. To manage these quick turnarounds, Eno turns to small factories within a few hours’ drive of Shanghai, which also helps keep inventory levels low.

In 2006 Hartmann and Petersen converted a former karaoke bar on Shanghai’s fashionable Changle Road into a flagship location — part store, part performance venue for artists and musicians. Eno’s free monthly events have become popular, providing a more accessible alternative to the underground rock clubs that dominate Shanghai’s small live music scene. In 2007 the store hosted Beijing rockers P.K. 14, one of the best-known indie bands in China. (Their popularity hasn’t spread beyond the country’s borders just yet.)

Mixing fashion with music is hardly a new idea in the U.S., but the concept is still quite fresh in China. “I don’t think there’s been anything like this,” says Brad Ferguson, the manager of local pop-rock group Hard Queen, which has played five gigs at the store in the past two years. “The shows that audiences have enjoyed the most have been at Eno.”

For a startup with little cash to spend on advertising, those events — along with T-shirts featuring designs created by the bands themselves — have become a valuable marketing channel. Petersen typically gives each act a batch of free T-shirts, which the band then sells to fans. In return, Eno gets to put its logo on all band flyers and posters.

The local art, music and fashion scenes owe much to the dramatic surge in Internet access in China over the past decade. Fewer than 1.2 million users were online in 1998, according to the government’s China Internet Network Information Center. By June 2009, that number had surpassed 330 million. Despite the government’s extensive efforts to censor potentially subversive online content, a lot of cultural information has filtered through, and the impact has been tremendous.

“Ten years ago everyone looked the same here,” says Alexis Yang, 26, Eno’s events organizer, who sports an oversize woolen hat in Rastafarian colors. “There was no punk or hip-hop in China except for really underground stuff, and no way to express your personality.”

Nowadays, new streetwear fashions pour into China from South Korea, Japan, Europe and the U.S. But Hartmann and Petersen have learned that Chinese fashion trends tend not to follow the global model.

“Everywhere else, fashion starts from the runway, and you pretty much know what the trend’s going to be a year or two later,” says Hartmann. “Here it’s not really clear what’s going to end up working at what time. That’s why we tried to open up the design process as much as possible.”
Keep it cool

The unpredictability of China’s new youth market explains why Eno’s biggest fear is other homegrown brands. The Thing, for example, is a Shanghai company founded four years ago by Zheng Zhu and Zheng Yi, two brothers in their early thirties. Unlike Eno, the Zhengs didn’t receive any outside funding, starting the company with about $400 of their own money. Today, thanks to the work of chief designer Yi, The Thing has grown to six stores in Beijing and Shanghai, at least two of them located just steps from an Eno branch.

“China is catching up very quickly with the international fashion market, and competition is fierce,” says Sandy Chen, research director at the Shanghai office of TNS China, a market research firm. “Eno has established one of the leading indie brands, but it will have to be very sensitive to what’s in, what’s cool, and it will have to run the business very efficiently.”

Petersen and Hartmann hope to leapfrog the competition by turning Eno into a leaner enterprise, starting with their retail outlets, which they plan to hand over to franchisees. Eventually, they hope that Eno will find an international market.

“Sooner or later, people in other countries will want to see original Chinese design,” Hartmann says. “We’re a good platform for that.”

Meanwhile, Eno is growing another revenue stream through a separate consulting business, Enovate. Launched earlier this year with five employees, Enovate has already been hired by the likes of Ticketmaster (TKTM) and shoemaker New Balance to provide youth market research, as well as to help design and develop products for the Chinese market. Not bad for a company that has grown by trial and error.

Back at Eno’s store in the Joy City mall, a 20-year-old business student named Wang Meng is being forced to try on some jeans and a T-shirt by his girlfriend, Qiang Yi Na. Disconcertingly for the Eno staff, he walks out empty-handed. “It’s not my style,” says Wang, who sports a polo shirt and slacks.

Still, Wang is giddily appreciative of the buying opportunities available to his generation of consumers. “We’re rich,” he says with a grin, adding that both his parents grew up in a rural town, wearing hand-me-downs made by his grandparents.

Wang says he spends some 200 yuan a month (about $30) on clothes, funded by a parental allowance as well as profits from buying and selling shoes online, a small business that he runs from his university dorm.

Pondering the racks of clothes around him, he offers: “This is better than my parents’ life.

Fighting the five-finger discount

Inventory losses are on the rise, thanks mostly to cashiers giving themselves and friends five-finger discounts. Employees stole an estimated $15 billion from retailers last year, according to University of Florida criminologist Richard Hollinger, who conducts an annual survey of the country’s top stores. That’s 25% more than stores lost to shoplifters.

In almost all of these cases, closed-circuit-TV monitoring systems failed to spot the crime. “The problem is, you have hours and hours of video to go through,” says Hollinger. In recessionary times few companies have the staff to review all that footage.

So Agilence, a small firm in Camden, N.J., is stepping in with a solution: patented software that scans for likely theft moments and a team of “loss prevention” experts to review the results for you. By synchronizing raw security-camera footage with point-of-sale data, the software takes a still image associated with every item scanned at a checkout stand.

The market is crowded: Plenty of companies, including Vfinity and StopLift, sell advanced video surveillance technology. But few offer point-of-sale synchronization, and fewer still include human video analysts in the price of a subscription, which starts at $300 per month.

Rather than having to scan hours of video, Agilence’s investigators can quickly review thousands of still images on a computer screen, click on any that appear suspect and call up the full video of the transactions.

The Agilence analysts report likely cases of fraud — which employers can then see for themselves — and note areas in which intervention or improved training might help. “A retailer would have to hire 10 employees to do what we do for them,” says Pedro Ramos, vice president of operations at Agilence.

In particular, Ramos says, Agilence is seeing an increase in conspiracies between cashiers and customers, known as “sweethearting.” The employee may bag an item after voiding a transaction, or simply press the price check button on the register and allow his friend to walk past the checkout station as if a sale had been made.

Hollinger and other experts say Agilence is onto something big. The next step is to automate the process and identify common scam patterns. “We’re starting to see the computers getting smarter,” Hollinger says. “They soon may be smart enough to send a text message to alert a manager who’s actually in the store and can do something about it.

Free cash for your business
Small business grants are rare, but they do exist. Here’s how to find them.
When hunting for cash, desperate small business owners may find themselves sucked into buying books and software packages promising “Billions in Free Grants!” from Web sites with names like NeverPayItBack.com, or hiring consultants who promise to find them gads of money. All they’re likely to get, though, are empty promises.

Grants are rare, but the information you need to find and apply for legitimate ones is publicly available and free. For qualifying businesses, there really are opportunities to land free money from state, county and city governments, as well as private foundations and corporations.

Technology startups traditionally have the best chance of getting grant funding, often through the federal government’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. These programs are lucrative, awarding more than $2 billion each year, but both require a tight match with exacting requirements.

For most companies, a better fit will be the grants many state and city governments offer for small, tech-focused businesses. In Columbus, Ohio, TechColumbus offers TechGenesis grants of up to $50,000 to allow entrepreneurs to test their ideas and see if they are business-worthy. The Ben Franklin Partnership in Philadelphia and the Maine Technology Institute in Gardiner, Maine, are two more of the dozens of organizations that invest in local tech companies with growth potential.

Finding grant money for non-tech businesses is a little tougher. The first step: Figure out if you qualify for any special small business certifications, such as a minority-owned, disadvantaged, woman-owned or veteran-owned business. Federal and state governments sometimes give priority for grants to these types of business owners.

Then look at your local government Web sites — for your city, county and state — and find the economic development agency or area equivalent. Many of these agencies offer government-sponsored grants to attract new businesses or help existing firms expand, train workers, or become more environmentally friendly. For instance, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity offers matching grants to businesses that want to expand and modernize their recycling programs, while the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council gives workforce training grants to businesses in several Oregon counties.

Next, sign up at Grants.gov to receive information about specific kinds of federal grants. Few businesses will directly qualify, but with some creativity, you can find ways to tap the cash flow, says Kate Lister, author of Finding Money –The Small Business Guide to Financing.

“Let’s say you own a small plumbing company,” Lister says, “and at the federal level there is a grant for capital improvements for which only schools can apply. Sign up to be notified of anything that happens with that grant and post your own note to it that says, ‘I’d like to be a subcontractor on this.’ Or go to the contracting officer listed and say, ‘Here’s what I can offer.’ Since that contracting officer is the person who will notify the winner of their grant award, he can also say to the school: ‘Hey, I’ve got a contractor you might want to try.’ And even if this isn’t the right grant for you, there might be something else down the line, so connecting with these contracting officers is really all about networking.”

Another avenue for grant money is workforce training. Most states have grants, often funded through the unemployment insurance tax system, says Michael Godley, principal at Workforce Development, a consultancy in Boston that focuses on helping business owners tap into workforce training funds nationwide. A good way to find these grants is by simply Googling “workforce training funds” within your state, or contacting local community colleges — they often administer the funds — or a workforce investment board.

The legislature in Massachusetts, for example, just funded its workforce training fund at $10 million. That’s down from the previous year, when it got $21 million. But as Godley points out: “Ten million is still a lot of money. And that will go to a few hundred companies.”

Small manufacturers can find grants for upgrading facilities or updating processes by looking at their state’s Manufacturing Extension Partnerships. Nearly every state has one, says Bob Kill, president of Enterprise Minnesota, which provides Minnesota-based manufacturing companies with matching grants for process improvement or staff development. In New York, Empire State Development offers capital grants of up to $1 million to manufacturers with as few as 50 employees, through its manufacturing assistance program.

A good source for foundation grants is the Foundation Center, which offers basic information on U.S.-based foundations, grant-making public charities and corporate giving programs. Most of these sorts of grants go to non-profits, but one way small businesses can broaden their suitability for grants is to create a not-for-profit offshoot to their business. The not-for-profit side usually offers different or less comprehensive products and services than the for-profit, says Dave Lavinsky, president of Growthink in New York City, a consultancy that assists startups in developing business plans and raising capital. A for-profit children’s theatre company, for example, could have a non-profit arm teaching after-school drama programs.

No matter what grant you apply for, remember that the cash is usually earmarked for funding specific projects or products — not entire companies. If you want free money, be prepared to adapt. “A lot of times business owners will modify their business based on funding opportunities,” Lavinsky notes.

Make money in 2010: Your investments
After this year’s monster rally, smaller gains probably lie ahead.
(Money Magazine) — With the market up more than 60% since March, you’re probably feeling a lot better about your portfolio lately than you did a year ago. The worry for 2010: Will the runup run out of steam?

Even though stocks are still well below their 2007 peak, they can no longer be considered cheap, with the price/earnings ratio for companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 now nearly 20% higher than its long-term average.

“In order for the market to keep delivering gains in 2010, companies need to start showing some real, sustainable earnings growth,” says Tom Forester, manager of the Forester Value Fund.

The good news is that those profits will probably materialize. Analysts look for operating earnings for S&P 500 companies to rise 27% from recession-battered levels, fueled primarily by improving economic growth overseas and a further weakening of the U.S. dollar (that makes our goods cheaper abroad and boosts exports).

So even if P/E ratios fall to historic levels, stocks still have room to move modestly higher, says Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research. How modestly? Say goodbye to double digits and get used to returns closer to 6% annually for the foreseeable future.

Over the short-term, the path to that 6% may not be smooth, given the risks the economy still faces. But you’ll be hard-pressed to do better elsewhere. “The easy money has already been made in the bond market too,” says Carl Kaufman, manager of the Osterweis Strategic Income fund. Most analysts now expect low- to mid-single-digit returns for both high-quality and “junk-rated” issues in 2010, and a skimpier 2% to 3% for Treasuries at best.

Wild card: To fill the void created by the slowdown in consumer spending, U.S. companies must rely more on exports to fuel profits. If growth stalls overseas, corporate earnings and stock prices here will also suffer.

What to watch: Keep an eye on the yield curve. A widening gap between the yields on 10-year and two-year Treasuries signals growth in the economy and corporate profits.
The action plan

Stocks: Rebalance your portfolio — now. Sharp market moves can quickly throw your asset allocation out of whack. That’s why back in March, with stocks down 57% in 18 months, Money advised moving swiftly to rebalance your portfolio to its normal stock-bond mix and maybe boosting your stock weighting by five percentage points.

Given the market’s white-hot performance since, your portfolio is likely off -kilter again — only this time, you probably have too little in bonds. Rebalance again now to get back to your original mix and consider raising your bond commitment by five to 10 points. Get there by directing all new investments into fixed-income securities or by shifting money out of stocks and into bonds until you’re at the allocation you want.

Stocks: Favor the big guns. Also weigh shifts within the stock portion of your portfolio to reflect changes in market conditions. For instance, small-cap stocks with little (or no) earnings have been the big winners in this year’s rally, making blue chips look cheap by comparison.

“As the recovery matures, the best performers will be high-quality companies with lots of cash, sustainable earnings, and the clout to take market share,” says David Spika, chief investment officer of Westwood Holdings. A good option for beefing up on big-caps: FMI Large Cap (FMIHX) on the Money 70 list of recommended funds.

Stocks: Think globally. Next year business spending is expected to hold up better than consumer spending, especially in overseas markets. Goldman Sachs’s chief U.S. strategist David Kostin thinks energy, technology, and materials companies should see particularly robust growth, since they generate at least half their revenue from foreign markets. Jensen (JENSX) and T. Rowe Price New Era (PRNEX) are Money 70 funds with big bets on these sectors.

Bonds: Stay short and focused on quality. To shield yourself from the twin risks of default and rising rates, stick with highly rated bonds that mature in five years or less. A smart choice: FPA New Income (FPNIX), which has a mix of top-rated corporates and munis. And don’t limit your foreign exposure to stocks; it makes sense to be looking abroad when it comes to some of your bondholdings as well. A solid choice: Templeton Global Bond (TPNIX).

Bonds: Hedge against inflation. Subpar growth should keep a lid on prices next year. But inflation could reignite quickly after that, given the big money the government is pumping into the economy. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, which adjust your principal to keep up with rising prices, protect you against this threat. Buy them via a fund like iShares Barclays TIPS Bond (TIP).

Stocks: Buyers ’swooping back in’
Wall Street lost a mere 6% in the fall selloff before bouncing back last week. Can it keep the ball rolling in a challenging week ahead?
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — So was that it? Is the so-called market correction over?

Stocks rallied last week, with the Dow reclaiming 10,000, as the major indexes erased most of the losses of the previous two weeks. With the week ahead light on economic and corporate news, market direction will be fueled mostly by momentum and emotion.

“For a while, it looked like we were having a buyer’s strike, but then the buyers came swooping back in at the end of the week,” said Timothy Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management.

After rallying 63% from its 12-year low hit in March, the S&P 500 shed nearly 6% in the last two weeks of October. Some feared the pullback would extend to 15%. Instead, buyers jumped back in.

“The looming issue is whether we’ve seen enough of a correction to bring out even more buyers or whether we need to see a bigger leg down first,” Ghriskey said.

A combination of trillions still sitting in money market funds in either cash or low-yielding cash equivalents makes the case for another run up. Slowly improving economic and corporate news should help as well. But as Friday’s labor market report made clear, the economic recovering is still in its infancy.

Jobs and the consumer: Last week’s run was fueled by better-than-expected profit and economic reports, the government’s decision to extend unemployment benefits and the homebuyer tax credit — and news that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA, Fortune 500) bought railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI, Fortune 500).

But even bad or mixed news on the jobs front got rewarded last week, most notably on Friday, when stocks managed to gain despite a government report showing unemployment hit a 26-year high of 10.2% last month.
0:00 /5:00Obama’s agendas collide

The knowledge that the labor market is the last area to turn in a recovery and that the unemployment rate would eventually top 10% may have taken the sting out of the report, Ghriskey said. Or there may be the perception that the 10.2% rate was as bad as its going to get.

Either way, the willingness of investors to respond to both good and bad news by jumping in and buying suggests the mood has turned more positive again — whether it should or shouldn’t.

Wall Street saw its biggest one-day rally in three months after the weekly jobless claims dropped to 512,000, a level not seen since January. Yet, the decline could mean people are running out of benefits, rather than finding jobs. And unemployed or underemployed consumers don’t spend aggressively — problematic for a recovery.

“At some point soon we need to start seeing improvement rather than just better-than-expected news,” said Mike Stanfield, chief investment officer at VSR Financial Services.

“Even if the news continues to improve it’s reasonable that stocks will seesaw for the next few months until the economic news starts to show stronger growth,” he said.
On the docket

Monday: This week brings the quarterly refunding from the Treasury Department. Treasury issues $40 billion in 3-year notes Monday, $25 billion in ten-year notes Tuesday and $16 billion in 30-year bonds Thursday.

Tuesday: The Senate Budget Committee holds a hearing on bi-partisan efforts needed to cut the deficit.

Bank of America’s financial services conference begins in the morning, with outgoing CEO Ken Lewis due to speak.

Wednesday: Treasury bond markets, government offices and some banks are closed for Veterans Day, but all other financial markets are open.

After the close of trading, Applied Materials (AMAT, Fortune 500) reports quarterly results. The chip gear maker is expected to have earned 3 cents per share versus 18 cents a year ago, according to analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

Thursday: Wal-Mart Stores (WMT, Fortune 500) reports results before the start of trading. The Dow component is expected to have earned 81 cents per share versus 77 cents a year ago, according to forecasts.

Walt Disney (DIS, Fortune 500) reports quarterly earnings after the close. The media company is expected to have earned 40 cents per share versus 43 cents a year ago.

Government readings on weekly jobless claims, weekly crude oil inventories and the October Treasury budget are also due in the morning, but forecasts weren’t available in advance.

Friday: The September trade balance is due out before start of trading. The trade gap is expected to have widened to $31.9 billion from $30.7 billion in the previous month, according to a consensus of economists surveyed by Briefing.com.

The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index for November is expected to have risen to 71.8 from 70.6 in the previous month.

JC Penney (JCP, Fortune 500) is due to report results before the start of trading. The retailer is expected to have earned 11 cents per share versus 55 cents a year ago.

Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) reports results before the start of trading. The retailer is expected to have earned 21 cents per share versus 72 cents a year earlier.

Government readings on October import and export prices are also due in the morning, but forecasts were not available in advance. Reading in cbwp.us blog