(FORTUNE Magazine) – POLLY PECK INTERNATIONAL PLC Consumer electronics, textiles, fruits, and vegetables: This odd assortment of businesses has produced perky profits for Polly Peck. Polly makes its corporate home in London but operates mainly out of Turkey and Cyprus, where labor is cheap and fruit plentiful. In fiscal 1988 the company earned $183 million on revenues of $1.2 billion. The original Polly Peck was a floundering British textile manufacturer. Enter Turkish Cypriot Asil Nadir, who already had his own profitable clothing company in England. He bought Polly Peck in 1980, quickly turned it around, and began searching for ways to expand. Nadir knew that in Cyprus and Turkey fruit was literally rotting on the vine, in part because neither country had enough shipping cartons. So he started a cardboard-box company in Turkey and filled the boxes with fruits and vegetables for export. Ever the entrepreneur, Nadir spied another opportunity in Turkey in 1984, when color television came to the country. That year, Polly Peck opened its Vestel electronics plant, a startup that has become the largest maker of televisions and audio equipment there. Agriculture and electronics now account for 89% of Polly Peck's business. The Near East, an area largely ignored by Western marketers, has been good to Polly Peck, but the company is doing even better abroad. Nearly 60% of its sales are to Europe and North America; it expects to sell three-quarters of its Turkish-made electronics in Europe by the end of 1989. In 1987 Polly Peck bought a home-appliances maker in Britain and an electronics manufacturer in Taiwan. In 1988 it acquired Prevor Marketing International, a New York produce importer. And early this year it bought Mendelson-Zeller, the Fresno, California, fresh produce subsidiary of Campbell Soup Co. Polly Peck also exports fruit from growers in South America and Spain. The expansion out of low-cost Turkey and Cyprus may cut into profits. Even so, Peter Jones, an analyst with Shearson Lehman Hutton in London, says Polly Peck's earnings will grow 15% in 1989. Last June, Britain's Management Today magazine cited Polly Peck as the fastest-rising stock on the London Stock Exchange. American investors own 25% of the London shares, most of them purchased through Fidelity and Templeton mutual funds. In addition, American depositary receipts trade over the counter for $20, seven times estimated 1989 earnings.

JENNIFER CONVERTIBLES In three years, Jennifer Convertibles Inc. has become the fastest-growing furniture retailer in the U.S. The company, which sells sofa beds in 33 stores on the East Coast, plans to add 29 stores this year. (Jennifer of New York, an older and privately owned affiliate, operates stores in New York State.) Analyst Daniel Offen of Gruntal & Co. estimates that fiscal 1989 revenues will be $35 million, up from $15 million last year. The pace has taken its toll; because startup costs run as much as $150,000 per store, Jennifer lost $1.3 million last year. But some of the first stores are beginning to earn their keep, and Offen expects the company to be profitable by the time its fiscal year ends in August. The stock trades for $4.50 a share. Jennifer's only significant competitor is Castro Convertibles, a privately held company that seems to be taking a nap. ''Castro has been around for many years,'' says Offen, ''but has not shown dramatic growth.''

PENTECH INTERNATIONAL Could it be? A company increases in size 11-fold in three years selling nothing but pens, pencils, and crayons? Yep. Sales of Pentech International Inc. were $17 million in fiscal 1988, vs. $1.5 million in 1985. Earnings were $1.9 million, an increase of 112% over 1987. Louis Ehrenkrantz, an analyst at Reich & Co. in New York, likens Pentech to, of all companies, 3M; both businesses, he says, have grown through innovation rather than acquisition. Says Ehrenkrantz: ''Pens are basically a disposable item. Pentech has constantly hit its market with new products, such as markers that can be easily erased -- no small thing for the mother or father of a 5-year-old.'' Pentech sells roughly 50 items, including pens that smell like lemons or blueberries, and one schizophrenic scribbling instrument that changes color when it's used on specially treated paper. The stock sells for about $2.50 a share, ten times this year's projected earnings.

FUTURE MEDICAL PRODUCTS The name is fitting. So far, Future Medical Products Inc. has no revenues, but its first product could be a big one: a neurostimulator that helps assuage the cravings and withdrawal symptoms of drug and alcohol detoxification. The device uses electrical pulses to stimulate the production of endorphins, the brain's own painkiller and the hormone that produces the so-called runner's high. Chairman Anthony Parkes says the neurostimulator does not create the side effects of methadone therapy, which substitutes one chemical dependency for another. Future Medical, located in Hauppauge, New York, went public in December. The underwriter, Individual's Securities Ltd., warns that buying the stock is risky, since the neurostimulator has not yet been approved by the FDA. But that hasn't bothered some investors: The units (composed of five shares of common stock and three warrants) jumped from their offering price of $5.10 each to a recent $18.