Watching the bottom line from a downtown high-rise

From her eighth-floor office looking over Lancaster's Penn Square, Carol Aubitz is making sure everything counts.

The numbers are crunched and re-crunched as she searches for the precise niche for each of her clients.

Her three employees, Laurie Rogers, Tom Henman and Barb Royer, are just as exact, mulling over the minutia of their work.

Aubitz's Excelsior Direct Marketing moved up "in the clouds" in Lancaster city's venerable Griest Building, bucking the business trend of moving out of cities and into business parks. Excelsior bucks conventional wisdom with its business practices, too.

For instance, Aubitz, who took control of the company

in 1996, has given away her company's hard work for free.

Excelsior acts as the marketing force behind Lancaster Downtown Investment District and the city of Lancaster holiday events. This included spreading the word about the Dec. 3 Christmas tree lighting by Mayor Charlie Smithgall and the tuba concert. The firm placed advertisements in papers, on flyers and on the radio to urge people to celebrate the season at the city's downtown events - all pro bono.

"It's important to support the city," Aubitz said. "Without a strong city, everything else around it crumbles."

It's easy to complain about the bad things a city does and not do anything to make things better, reasons Aubitz. That's why she has lent a hand in the efforts to bring more people downtown,

"We would be lost without (Excelsior)," said Jan Beitzer, DID's executive director. "The way everything is turning out has been great."

And that's what Aubitz says Excelsior is all about.

"We won't win any industry awards for flash and glitz or how good looking a publication we create is," Aubitz. said. "But if they start giving the awards out for results, that's when we'll be interested in winning awards."

Aubitz, a 25-year veteran of marketing with a journalism degree from Columbia University, said her company can project how well a business will perform and the best months for a business. She said her forecasts are within 10 percent for the past 19 years.

She specializes in direct marketing for her 16 clients, who come from Central Pennsylvania, California and Canada, and finds the exact niche they need to maximize

their businesses.

To do this, Aubitz said Excelsior gets into the science and psychology of what motivates the customer. Twenty percent of the customers bring in 80 percent of the business for a company, Aubitz said. She targets that 20 percent.

This philosophy has benefited her company, too. In 1998, Excelsior had $1.2 million in revenues. It surpassed that number in late October of this year.

"In the end, it's only the results that count," Aubitz said.