NEW COKE FLAVORS may be in the works. Coca-Cola President William E. Robinson concedes that the world's biggest soft-drink company is a one-product outfit "in a sea of multiproduct enterprises," and that his chemists are tinkering with other flavors. While 1955 sales topped all records, with profits of $28 million, Coke's rate of gain in the booming home market was less than half the industry's overall increase.

DISCOUNT HOUSES, now grossing some $7 billion annually, are taking on the trappings as well as the sales of big business. To raise cash for more expansion, New York's fast-growing E. J. Korvette Inc. (eight stores in the metropolitan area, two others abuilding or planned) floated its first public stock issue with 220,000 shares (par value, $1; asking price, $10) of common stock, sold it out to eager investors as soon as the news hit Wall Street.

DECEIVING DEBTORS in order to make them pay up has been ruled out for businessmen by the Federal Trade Commission. In a case involving a Washington company that supplied forms to collection agencies and merchants, FTC found that the company was tricking debtors into giving information on salaries, jobs, etc. by creating the false impression that it was wanted by the U.S. Government or for a consumer survey. Said FTC: "Two wrongs do not make a right. The stability of business cannot be sustained by falsehood."

APPLIANCE SALES will break all records in 1956, says Bernard A. Chapman, general manager of American Motors' Kelvinator Division. Though the rate of increase may taper off, the market is still so strong that the industry will sell 15,755,000 "major appliances" (refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, etc.) next year, a 6% increase over 1955.

RKO PICTURES, originally bought by General Tire & Rubber Co.'s Teleradio subsidiary for its film backlog (TIME, Aug. 1), will swing back into full operation as a major moviemaker. After virtually shutting down under Industrialist Howard Hughes, RKO will start off with a $22.5 million budget for eleven films (among them: Cash McCall, A Farewell to Arms, The Syndicate) in the first six months of 1956 alone.

SMALL BUSINESS troubles have the Senate Small Business Committee worried. Though many small businessmen are doing better in personal income than their profit figures show, the committee has drawn up a unanimous report calling attention to the fact that small businessmen with less than $250,000 assets made only a 1-c- profit per $1 of sales in the first half of 1955 v. 7.2-c- per $1 of sales for big companies. Furthermore, says the committee, business failures are now up to 42 per 10,000 firms, 68% more than the ten-year postwar average, with the majority of them among small businesses.

BANKING BATTLE is shaping up between Transamerica Corp., which once controlled the giant Bank of America, and onetime Federal Reserve Chairman Marriner Eccles' First Security Corp. of Salt Lake City (resources: $400 million). To give Eccles some competition, Transamerica has spent an estimated $2,000,000 for three banks and four branches (total assets: $44 million) in Idaho, is expected to move into Eccles' own stronghold of Utah.

COMPETITIVE BIDDING for defense contracts will increase, if House Armed Services Chairman Carl Vinson has his way. After a 30-month study showed that 94% of all contracts were negotiated, Vinson introduced a bill to hold down negotiated deals in peacetime, may propose an amendment that would peg the total no higher than 50%. One example that influenced Vinson: a 1955 negotiated contract for Air Force rocket launchers originally set the price at $32.62 apiece; competitive bids later brought the cost down to $20.47.

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