Avalon Marketing Reports $328,000 Loss for Quarter

Avalon Marketing, a Los Angeles firm whose largest business is the Applause Inc. gift firm in Woodland Hills, said it lost $328,000 for the third quarter ended March 31 on sales of $80.3 million.

Avalon said Applause’s sales fell in that period, in part because of weaker sales of seasonal items and products that feature the California Raisins characters. Avalon blamed the decrease in Applause’s sales to larger inventories, increased competition and more cautious buying by consumers.

Avalon said Applause’s slowdown in sales was offset partly by stronger sales of products that feature other licensed characters, including Snoopy and characters from Looney Tunes and Sesame Street.

Year-earlier results for Avalon are not comparable because the company acquired Applause on May 26, 1988. Avalon said that if it had owned Applause at the beginning of last year, it would have earned $1.8 million in the third quarter on sales of $78.9 million.

For the nine-month period, Avalon earned $3.3 million on sales of $248 million. The company said that if it had owned Applause in that period, it would have earned $3.1 million on sales of $214.5 million.

Avalon is a privately held company that is controlled by an investment firm owned by the wealthy Thompson family in Dallas. In addition to Applause, Avalon has such subsidiaries as International Tropic-Cal, a designer and marketer of sunglasses, and BMK, a “rack job” company that sells products to retailers. Avalon has no publicly traded common stock, but periodically files earnings reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission because it has outstanding debts.