In the next three years, some of Pfizer's most important drugs will lose patent protection, including Zithromax and Norvasc, a blood pressure medicine that is its second-largest seller.

Whatever the case, if anyone has the strength to swim against the I.B.M. tide, it may be Compaq, the second-largest seller of personal computers to business.

PG&E Energy Trading, by several estimates, is now the second-largest seller of electricity in New England.

At Tiffany & Company, the second-largest seller of fine jewelry, operating profit rose, though comparable store sales dropped 1 percent.

C1 Warning From Gateway The nation's second-largest direct seller of computers said Thanksgiving weekend sales were 30 percent below last year's, and it warned that it would probably miss quarterly earnings and revenue projections.

Jamie Ross added that "Tillie, the Bag Lady Frog," a painted cartoonlike creature produced for a mail-order company, was the company's second-largest seller.

A Wisconsin dairy cooperative that Mr. Siemon began in 1988, it is the second-largest seller of organic milk in the country.

Ford's falling sales have allowed the Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan to replace it as the second-largest seller of vehicles in the United States, after General Motors, through the first four months.

But last week, Novell made an effort at a recovery when it announced a $210 million deal to acquire Germany's SuSE Linux, the world's second-largest seller of the Linux operating system.

Susan Rosborough, an Allstate lawyer, said the company, the country's second-largest seller of auto and home insurance after State Farm, treated its agents properly and legally.