PhillyDeals: Amid rough surf, 2 proud to be capitalists

Levittown native Bill Dreibelbis owns the Quiet Storm Surf Shops, a chain that stretches from Rehoboth, Del., to Maui, Hawaii.

Randy Bradley of Chadds Ford is a management consultant and chief executive of Life Management Advisor L.L.C., which sells specialized search engines to stockbrokers and elder-care advisers.

They're capitalists. And proud of it.

They feel under attack. And they're doing something about it.

Something capitalistic.

"I was very hopeful when Obama got elected," Dreibelbis says. "But some of the things he's doing, I feel, are anticapitalist."

He says Washington's attacks on business leaders have created an antibusiness social climate.

"People nowadays make you feel you have to make an excuse for trying to make a buck. Now, I'm not saying what people like Madoff did is good for anyone. That hurts us all. But that doesn't mean we punish people who had nothing to do with all that," Dreibelbis says.

"I started my first store in 1978, and this is the roughest time I've seen in 30 years."

Bradley and his wife first met Dreibelbis at his St. Croix, Virgin Islands, surf shop 10 years ago.

Like Dreibelbis, Bradley is feeling under attack. "As a capitalist, I'm getting tired of seeing my way of life vilified," he told me.

Talking to friends in business, Bradley found he'd struck a nerve.

"I'm proud to be a capitalist," Bradley told his friends.

How's that for a slogan? Something you could maybe write on T-shirts, golf togs, hats, to send a message?

Yeah. They liked that.

Bradley called Dreibelbis at his shop in Maui, where he now lives, knowing Dreibelbis had an embroidery business on the side.

"He was like, 'Do you want in?' " Dreibelbis recalled of the conversation with Bradley. "Yeah. I want in."

Dreibelbis tried the idea on his golfing buddies and other business acquaintances, who were all supportive: "Everyone's like, 'Where can I get stuff like that?' "

They went partners. Dreibelbis called suppliers. He'll handle that contracting through a firm he owns in Baltimore.

"I'm getting the T-shirts, hats, polos," he said. "That's my part of the business. Randy's pushing the brand. He's very good online."

They'll ship the shirts straight to customers, filling orders. "It's going to be a grass-roots movement," Dreibelbis said. "Randy's done a great job getting the electronic info together."

Ten percent of profits go to the Twin Towers Orphan Fund, which benefits people who lost parents in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Bradley worked at the brokerage Gruntal & Co., across the street from the massacres. "Capitalism was the focus of the attack," he told me.

"And now, eight years later, we're in a mode where being a capitalist is a bad thing here at home.

"Well, it's not. It creates jobs. It creates innovation. It creates philanthropy. That's what this is all about."

They launched the site this week at www.proudtobeacapitalist.com.

Wells Fargo shares rose sharply last week and other bank shares rose, after the giant San Francisco-based bank (it's the biggest lender in metro Philly and many other metro markets) projected higher-than-expected earnings for the first quarter.

But what Wells Fargo didn't tell us had some bank-watchers worried. "While the market is reacting favorably . . . we remain cautious based on what we don't know," writes analyst Paul J. Miller Jr. and his colleagues at FBR Capital Markets & Co., of Arlington, Va., in a report to clients. "We believe that credit quality materially deteriorated in the first quarter, and that Wells Fargo is under-reserving for expected future losses."

What Wells Fargo didn't report, according to Miller: "What happened to non-performing loans, and what would have been net charge-offs excluding purchase-accounting adjustments? What are the trends" in West Coast mortgage write-offs? "Was there any benefit" from the Financial Accounting Standards Board's new, watered-down mark-to-market rules?

"We hope these questions will be answered when the company reports results on April 22."

A Wells Fargo spokesman said, "Wells doesn't comment on analyst reports."