North Bay Business Journal

CORTE MADERA — Trading opened higher than expected Friday in the new public offering of common stock in RH (NYSE: RH), the new name for luxury home furnishing retailer Restoration Hardware.

The share price rose nearly 30 percent during the trading session.

Florida-based Halifax Media Group has agreed to sell the Press Democrat, North Bay Business Journal and Petaluma Argus-Courier to a group of local investors lead by Sonoma Media Investments, LLC, which purchased the Sonoma Index-Tribune earlier this year.

Allen Wine Group LLP, a wine industry business advisory service and CPA firm, appointed Bill Atwood as general partner. …

Sunergy, Inc. appointed of Gary Houck of Napa to its board of directors and to the Sunergy management team. …

Carlton Jacobson has been appointed vice president of finance for the St. Helena Region for Adventist Health’s Northern California Network. …

Paul Selivanoff has been appointed vice president of finance, revenue management and physician services for the Northern California Network for Adventist Health. …

Tricia Williams has accepted a new position with the St. Helena Hospital Region for Adventist Healh, becoming the regional vice president of behavioral medicine and population health. …

Gastroenterologists Sumit Kohli, M.D., Paul W. Hornberger, M.D., R. Logan Faust, M.D., and Richard M. Auld, Jr., M.D., have joined Sutter Pacific Medical Foundation, part of the Sutter Health network. …

Art Peck, the current president of Gap North America, has been appointed president of the new Innovation, Digital Strategy and New Brands Division. …

Christopher Huber has been named director of private client sales and marketing for Hanzell Vineyards. …

CORTE MADERA — RH, the new name for luxury home furnishings retailer Restoration Hardware, lowered the maximum amount it wants to raise in a return to public ownership sometime this year to $142.5 million, according to a new regulatory filing.

The latest amended filing added financial details to the sensitive relationship between the company and founder Gary Freidman after he resigned as chairman and co-chief executive officer in August to advisory roles as chairman emeritus, “creator and curator.”

ST. HELENA — Blicker Pierce Wagner Wine Merchants, an online retailer of fine and rare collectibles that is better known as BP Wine, and the owners’ “flash” online wine sales venture Last Bottle Wines are growing so quickly that they are have secured a much larger south Napa warehouse.

CORTE MADERA — RH, the new name for luxury home furnishings seller Restoration Hardware, plans to raise up to $150 million in an initial public offering sometime in 2012, according to a regulatory filing today.

CORTE MADERA — Restoration Hardware today said it will rebrand as RH, better reflecting its current positioning as a provider of modern, high-end home furnishings.

The Corte Madera-based company is currently pursuing an initial public offering sometime in 2012

In case you haven’t noticed, young adults no longer wear watches. Is it because they are indifferent to the time of day and have nowhere to be? Of course not. It’s because smartphones have taken the place of watches, as well as encyclopedias, dictionaries, phone books and in many cases, even traditional computers in the lives of many so called “Millennial” consumers.

Chief financial officer, Hansel Auto Group, Santa Rosa. A CFO must have “a thorough understanding of the marketplace, regulations, technology solutions, and our business operations; all in an effort to provide support to our operational personnel from a financial aspect while ensuring compliance.

On July 12 the Santa Rosa Planning Commission voted 6-1 to approve redevelopment of the vacant Gottschalks store at Coddingtown regional mall in Santa RosaI as a single-story Target department store. Questions about the number of planned part-time vs. full-time jobs brought the matter back to the commission twice after initial approval in June.

Take this week’s NBBJ Pulse Poll: Was the Santa Rosa Planning Commission correct in approving the Target store project in Coddingtown over opponents’ contentions about employee wages and benefits?

NAPA — Lixit Corporation, as its name implies, is the largest small animal watering device manufacturer in the world, with a 70 percent market share in its category and revenues in excess of $10 million annually. The firm has been growing at a double-digit rate for the past couple of years, despite a five percent decline during the recession.

“The best way to keep them working is to keep them happy,” said Rob Turner, founder and president of EMG, Inc., about the more than five dozen production employees in the north Santa Rosa factory.

From injection molding for plastic cases around the company’s dozens of variations of electromagnetic pickups for amplifying musical instruments to precise wire winding for pickup coils to cable assemblies, the factory staff make and assemble most all the key components in a 30,000-square-foot factory in an industrial park near Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport.

In 1989, Missy Park was told the only way to launch a mail-order company was to send out no fewer than 250,000 catalogs.

The founder of Title Nine sportswear and the keynote speaker at the Business Journal’s June 28 Women in Business Awards Gala didn’t have the resources to come anywhere near that number. So she gathered her friends to model the clothing and take the photos and she mailed out 30,000 catalogs.

UKIAH and FAIRFIELD — The impact of a tough economy has totaled a number of North Bay automobile body repair shops, but it hasn’t seriously dented growth plans for G&C AutoBody, which has about doubled its number of locations in the past few years.

PETALUMA — Short-staffed office workers feeling the squeeze of deadlines increasingly are reaching for Office Playground Inc.’s growing line of silly-styled squeeze toys and other daft diversions, so much so that the Novato-based business plans to significantly grow size in a move to Petaluma.

NAPA — The oldest operating chocolate producer in Napa Valley plans to greatly increase its capacity to make wholesale confections by opening a second local factory.

Legislation to help prevent the extinction of California’s native coho salmon was approved by the State Assembly on a bipartisan vote. … This June, Sonoma County is joining communities across the globe to raise awareness of elder abuse, and to encourage actions that empower older adults, educate the community and enhance intergenerational relationships. … Athleta opens a store in Palo Alto. .. Sutter Solano Medical Center announced the purchase of a new Hana Fracture Table.

NAPA — A year after it significantly expanded a high-end residential interiors dealership in Marin County, Healdsburg-based HLC Inc. is planting roots in Napa Valley.

Cost Plus Inc. (Nasdaq: CPWM) stores in Santa Rosa, Napa and Greenbrae are part of a $495 million cash deal announced today by the Oakland-based home accessories retailer to sell the operation to New Jersey-based Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBY), which has stores in Santa Rosa, Larkspur and Vallejo.

SANTA ROSA — Marmot Mountain LLC is on track to meet its goal of doubling sales and the number of its new branded stores worldwide, and that has the 38-year-old maker of premium outdoor gear for serious expeditions and sports apparel for technical and everyday use preparing its headquarters and local production facility for a trek to a high-profile Rohnert Park location twice the size this summer.