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National Media Corp., the nation’s largest infomercial and direct response advertising company, is relocating its headquarters and 150 staffers from Philadelphia to Encino, according to Stephen Lehman, who took over in August as chairman and CEO.

Lehman, who already works in Encino, led a management group in buying $20 million of convertible preferred stock in National Media, and now he wants to lead the infomercial maker into the world of e-commerce.

National Media, a publicly held company with $278.5 million in 1997 sales, is setting up a Web site to sell product, and also maneuvering to place infomercials on the Web, as it becomes better able to handle television-quality transmissions, said Lehman.

“We will carry 800,000 brand-name items, and sell them through our membership ‘Everything4Less’ national discount shopping club,” he said.

National radio and television infomercials National Media buys $100 million worth of time a year will also direct viewers to the Web sites.

Since Lehman has arrived on the scene, the company’s stock has risen to about $5, from a 52-week low of $1.

National Media has forged an alliance with Broadcast.com Inc. to air infomercials over the Web, and as more people access the Internet through high-capacity cable television wires, the medium will be able to deliver television-quality transmissions.

“Essentially, we will be able to create a national television infomercial network, without all the overhead and cost of the network,” he said.

Lehman made his mark in the world of communications as founder of Premiere Radio, the national radio network that he took public for $18 million in 1992, and sold for more than $190 million last year.

The move to the Internet is a response to a downturn in television sales. The infomercial business has been struggling in recent years, as the price of TV time needed to broadcast these messages has skyrocketed and buyers have become resistant to TV purchases.

The problems hit National Media hard, leading to a management shakeup that resulted in the arrival of Lehman.

Tracking shoemaker

Skechers USA Inc., the Manhattan Beach-based shoemaker, canceled its $115.1 million initial public offering in the current tough IPO market.

It is not the first, but the second time Skechers and its Chairman and CEO Robert Greenberg have brought a horse to the IPO starting gate, only to back out.

In 1996, Greenberg filed IPO papers on Kani Inc., an apparel division of Skechers featuring the designs of Karl Kani, the noted urban-hip designer. But that IPO fizzled.

Greenberg, of course, found fame as the founder of now-defunct sneaker manufacturer L.A. Gear Inc. The once-glitzy sneaker concern ran into trouble in the late ’80s and eventually filed for bankruptcy protection.

Securities lawyer Leib Orlanski’s Beverly Hills law firm, Freshman Marantz Orlanksi Cooper & Klein, acted as company counsel on both Skechers underwritings though he stresses there is no connection between the two.

“The Kani IPO didn’t go ahead for internal reasons, but the Skechers IPO was killed by the market,” said Orlanksi.

Orlanski said he thinks the Skechers offering will go ahead next year, probably in the second quarter. The company put out a release blaming bad market conditions for the red light.

A veteran securities lawyer with 20-plus years under his belt, Orlanski noted how private money is financing transactions once financed by IPOs. But he added a twist: Entrepreneurs may be giving up more to get the financing. Example? “After the IPO market was hit, we recently helped a well-known Southern California hamburger chain secure private financing for an industry roll-up,” said Orlanski. “But where the IPO called for the owners to keep 60 percent of the equity, in the private deal they keep more like 40 percent.”

Orlanski wouldn’t identify the chain, but it is clear that private money extracts a higher price than the recent, frothy IPO market did. At any rate, Orlanski said his firm is keeping busy.

“Instead of working on two or three IPOs at a time, we are working on two or three mergers or venture capital deals. The private money is there,” he said.

Pizza time

Neil Dabney, founder of Century City-based investment banking boutique Dabney Flanigan LLC, just cooked up $5 million in financing for Stormin’ California Family Entertainment Inc., which will build 45 Peter Piper Pizza restaurants in California. There are already 150 of the pizza restaurants in the Southwest, Dabney said. They feature not only food, but video games and other entertainment for children and young adults.

“The average customer visits 24 times a year,” said Dabney. “They are strong with Latin consumers.”

The $5 million was raised from high-net-worth individuals, and was issued in the form of preferred stock that carries a 12.5 percent annual dividend.

Investors were not given exact targeted returns for their backing, but are expecting to get back “several” times their investment within a five-year period, said Dabney.

Promotion

Thomas Weinberger, 54, has been promoted to president of Sutro & Co., the investment banking shop with 670 employees. Formerly Sutro’s director of investment banking, Weinberger will still concentrate on getting money to growth companies, and will stay in Los Angeles, even as about half of Sutro’s troops are concentrated around him.

And in somewhat of a twist, Sutro’s Southern California headquarters may move from West L.A., said Weinberger. “We are going to need a lot more space, and we don’t have enough space now (in the Westwood Gateway building), and 50,000 feet of contiguous space is hard to find in West Los Angeles. We may move downtown.”

Contributing Reporter Benjamin Mark Cole writes about the local investment community for the Los Angeles Business Journal. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].