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Ashland company's earnings growing, with sales up 15% to 17% in each of last five years. Business seeks bigger share of market
By Paula Schleis
Beacon Journal business writer
Published on Sunday, Jul 27, 2008
ASHLAND: In the BookMasters Inc. warehouse, invisible wires guide vehicles as they travel the skinny aisles between shelves.
Their drivers operate platforms that lift them nearly 30 feet in the air to reach some of the 23,000 book titles housed here.
When the room was designed a couple of years ago, the company wondered if a fear of heights would keep some employees from working in the fulfillment center.
But it hasn't, said Dave Wurster, chief operating officer and son of company founders Tom and Ann Wurster.
And that's good, because BookMasters' 90,000-square-foot warehouse needed to grow vertically, following the company's earnings.
Sales have increased 15 percent to 17 percent in each of the last five years. Employee ranks have swelled from 185 to 230 since 2005.
And despite the struggling economy, the boom is expected to continue as BookMaster seeks a bigger share of its market by offering new and expanded services, Wurster said.
Finding a niche
In dollars, the Ashland company is a small player in the industry. BookMasters makes about $25 million a year, from moving about $90 million worth of books annually.
But the company lays claim to representing more publishers than any other firm in the country. It works with 2,000 clients — four times as many as its next biggest competitor, Wurster said.
That's because its niche is serving
small and independent publishers, a segment that larger printers and distributors consider a nuisance.
Far from swatting them away, BookMasters embraces the genealogists and poets who might sell fewer than 100 books, as well as the fiction, nonfiction and educational writers whose sales might reach up to 400,000.
Wurster showed the diversity of titles as he strolled through a room filled with pallets of unbound books and stacks of colorful covers. An Arkansas guide for bike riders rested next to a historical piece about a Spanish woman. A doctor's warning about dangerous parasites sat next to a mathematics textbook.
The company's range of a la carte services also is unmatched, he said.
''We're very flexible. We've done a good job of listening to our publisher clients. If they ask us to do something, we try to figure out how to give it to them,'' he said.
As a result, he said, ''We've evolved into the only fully integrated book manufacturer and book distributor in the world.''
Early beginnings
BookMasters actually did neither when it was founded in Palo Alto, Calif., in the 1960s by Dave's parents.
Tom, originally from Ashland, and Ann, from Wisconsin, were both book-manufacturing representatives sent to the West Coast by their respective companies when they met and married. So when they formed BookMasters, they did what they knew best — sales.
But Tom lost his hearing to a nerve condition in 1981, and those pre-technology days made it hard for a salesman so dependent on the phone.
So the two Midwesterners returned to their roots and settled in Tom's hometown, where they worked to diversify the company.
When publishers asked for help typesetting books, a new division was born.
When book manufacturers started refusing to print short runs for customers, BookMasters became a printer.
When independent publishers fretted about storing, selling and mailing books, the company launched its AtlasBooks Web store, a 24-hour phone ordering service, and a fulfillment center that keeps those lift vehicles in motion all day.
The company also designs and makes covers, does copy editing and indexing, collects permissions, creates CD and DVD support material — ''Everything that goes with the creation of this product,'' Wurster said.
The manufacturing arm offers offset printing for larger runs and digital printing for faster runs, as well as every kind of binding.
Key to the companies' financial success is that all services are fee-based, Wurster said. BookMasters is paid regardless of how well the book does. Many book distributors are paid through a royalty system, which is why they eschew titles that aren't likely to make a lot of money.
What's next
Now that BookMasters has conquered the small publisher market, the company plans to package a new collection of services and ''attack the next tier of publishers,'' Wurster said.
''That's why through the economic downturns . . . we've been able to maintain growth, because we're continuing to take market share,'' he said.
The weak U.S. dollar has lured in many European clients, Wurster added.
And because many of the titles are printed in small runs, there is little risk to losing the kind of work BookMasters does to China, where shipping would add to the cost.
The industry also is benefiting from organic growth. Desktop publishing, digital printing and Web marketing make it more tempting than ever for would-be authors to follow their muse.
That's where a one-stop printing and distribution shop makes economic sense, Wurster said. For both the publisher, and for the future of BookMasters.
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com.
ASHLAND: In the BookMasters Inc. warehouse, invisible wires guide vehicles as they travel the skinny aisles between shelves.
Get the full article here.
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