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Show agruryift yi n iTl) Umi ' - v - Deaths," Business 4 DESERET NEWS, SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 1973 Action Ads Right ; Mr. Ford, S.L. company keeps eye on Pantera faster than old Model T ; your reading By Arnold y Inine Associate Business Editor - SAN DIEGO, CALIF. Memo to Henry Tord II: Your West Coast people are very careless about whom cars. They let me they allow to drive company-ownedrive a new Capri on the open road and a new Pantera on a racetrack! A distributor's life isn't d always placid, they find By Don C. Woodward Mrs. Janice Jeffers Deseret News Business Editor They should have realized they were making a mistake when I had a hard time figuring out how to buckle the seat belt but they recklessly let me go ahead anyway. I did my best to pile it up but. fortunately, there was no barrier for me to hit on the hairpin turn I missed so the Pantera and I came through unscathed. Just thought youd be happy to know that, Mr. Ford. sorts returned magazines so they can be sent back to their publisher. The Pantera is the Divisions jazzy sports car designed and built in Modena Italy, that is, not Modena, Utah. It's the first exotic sports car to be offered in volume featuring a large American-mad- e engine with midship placement, according to the people. In Lincoln-Mercur- In j the bookshelf behind Edwin Madsens desk at Bonneville News theie is a picture of himself with a target superimposed upon it. A couple of darts stick out of the target one of them right on his nose. sme we are on target, but on us, Madsen. Then, once a week, the company will come back and pick up the magazines that havent been sold. About 35 percent of all we distribute we have to take back, he said. It seems like a waste, but we have to take them back. The return feature is very necessary to our business. Thct? One of my he asks ruefully. friends gave it to me and Ive kept it there. I figured I might as well. As president of the states major distribuof magazines and one of its largest distributors of paperback books, Madsen has indeed 100,000 outlets The magazine and book distributioft business is an important part of peoples lives even though a hidden one, he thinks. Actually, he says, I know of no industry where the wholesaler is equipped to distribute one item to 100,000 outlets on one day. -- area' About 650,000 people are in that more than half of .he states population. And in it, Bonneville is almost exclusive distributor of magazines and does a large, although not exclusive, distribution of paperbacks, which lend themselves more to competition. In a year we will handle 2.500 different titles, he said. Keeping track of all the titles, their publication dates, the billings to publishers, the returns and maintaining a, fresh supply out in the stores is a major undertaking for the 27 people on his staff. For its magazine distribution, Bonneville has contracts with various publishers, who allot the number to Utah that they think the state will be able to sell. Invariably they allot too many. Twice weekly ; Bonneville in turn makes arrangements with its retail outlets to set up a magazine (and book) stand, which it constructs and services. Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a bundle of magazines is dropped off containing that outlets allotment of The tricky part is in identifying which magazines will sell at which location. They start with a basic group of 24 titles, which they keep careful track of. After a few months they will know enough about the reading habits of the people who buy there to be able to make up a tailored product mix and . forecast sales figures for each one. They will also come back and check the in-- , ventory in the store. Youd think that a Time magazine customer would go to the same newsstand each week for his copy, but it doesnt work that way, said Madsen. The company sends men out to check ea.h location, taking a physical count of the number of magazines left. If they had projected sales of 60 magazines and the store is running ahead of its projection, they will add to its stock. If they are under the projection, they will take the extra magazines out and put them somewhere else. ; The onus is not on the dealer to make Theres always a pressure on papersaid Madsen. There are 300 different paperback titles coming out each month, and the average dealer stocks only about 200. So the minute we see they are not selling, we take them out. We cant give anything a free ride you have to be ruthless and hardboiled about it. The arrangement is generally a profitable one for retailers. Their percentage can vary from 20 percent to 30 percent of the sales price, depending upon volume. Cites profits recent study of sales in five magazine of drug stores showed how profitable it can be, said Edwin Madsen II, Madsens son and sales manager for the firm. Magazines, he said, reading from the study, generated a gross profit of $506 each linear foot and turned over 24.4 times in the year a return of 732 percent on investment. For books, the figure was $10.83 gross profit on each pocket and a turnover of 10.1 times a year for a return of 303 percent on investment. Can Madsen draw any conclusions on Utahns reading habits from his work? Areas vary A areas Not rpally, answers Madsen. The Magna area sells Westerns well, but you cant give them away in ZCMI. ZCMI is big in Harlequin Books, which feature the nurse stories, and yet at Bys Magazine Shop they are only a token amount of the sales. He said older women tend to go for the nurse stories, true stories seem to appeal more to areas where there are younger housewives, and there are only about 30 locations out of 300 where they can place Scientific American magazine. The biggest seller, beyond any question, he said, is TV Guide, which is mainly sold at check-ou- t The check-ou- t stands. stand is a if sell You can mine. you can anything gold get it there, he said. For that reason, too, Womens Day and Family Circle magazines rank about third and fourth in sales and Enquirer, a tabloid newspaper, ranks about second in sales. Playboy ranks about fifth, he said, and this illustrates one of his problems in censorship. y five-spee- d Edwin Madsen, Utah. Warehouse ccntians up to 250,000 paperbacks (left). The magazines high sales come even though it is sold in only about 55 percent of Bonnevilles accounts. It is also most often singled out by censorship groups. I guess no discussion of our business would be worthwhile without talking about censorship, sighed Madsen. We dont want to be bluenosed about it, and we dont want to handle anything obscene. There are over 200 titles in that area which you can get in other cities but which we will not handle here, he said. Not black and white Madsen added, The censorship issue isnt a real black and white issue. I wish it were, because it would make our job a lot easier. Madsen said the Youth Protection Committee, which works in this area on a communitywide basis, grew out of a suggestion which Cleon he made to the Skousen. The idea was to help take some of the pressure off the dealers by channeling complaints through one point. Bonneville traces its history back to the early days of magazine distribution when boys had magazine routes just as they now have paper routes. At first there was one major national distributor, the American News Co., whose affiliate in Salt Lake was the Utah News. Publishers, who felt the national monopoly was unresponsive, began picking independent distributors in various locations, and one of the first of these was W.C. Bingham News Agency. National advertising awards have been won bv Utah Power and Light Co. and Union Pa cific Railroad. The awards were presented bv the National Advertising Agency cepted appointment as associate director of press relations for The Church of Jesus Christ Saints. of Latter-daIn a related move, Don C. Woodward, business editor for the past 10 years, was named associate city editor. INTEREST All of the promotions are efsaid fective , immediately, Smart. Bate joined the newspaper COMPOUNDED A a graduate of fully-sourehigh-lntara-tt investment after graduating from wnndward. Inc., g m y Young University, joined the staff in 1961 as a copy editor, then worked as a reporter and science writer before becoming business editor. He received a Ford Foun dation professional journalism Bngham fen long range investors or trusts Investors with between $10,000 and $25,000 to Invest. Don C. Woodward named associate Call fellowship tc Stanford University in 1967 and one of the first newsmens fellowships to the Institute of Investment Banking at the Wharton School of Finance. He also lives in Bountiful. iT4 mid-20- Here, too, is where the returned magazines and books are destroyed in an operation that would make a bibliophile weep. The covers are tom off and sent back to the publisher as proof that they didnt sell. Some publishers, in fact, insist that they bundle up all the unsold magazines and send them back too, although a few will take Bonnevilles word for it. Employes aid sucess All of this is done by a surprisingly small staff. I maintain that the product is only a small part of our success formula, said Madsen. The biggest part is the people who work with you. Without them, wed be dead. He explains the small staff by saying that, to begin with, our sales are all small and our margin of profit is unbelievably low, so its a penny business. We have to make money by saving pennies. Madsen himself is past president of the Pacific Coast Wholesale Magazine Association and chairs the Bureau of Independent Publishers and Distributors. He is also on the states Tramway 3oard and a member of the Alta Planning Board. transaxle. The body design is racy, intended to appeal to the sports car buff. The cost currently is about $10,000. If youre thinking of buying one, better do it now. The company is coming out with the new Pantera L which will go on display in May, probably at a higher price, I asked about mileage on the Pantera but found its like J Pierpont Morgans yacht. If you have to ask how much it cost or what the mileage is you cant afford it. Joking aside, the mileage could be good or poor depend-Li- g on how the car is driven. For a Bob Bonderant on the raceway, the mileage is zilch. But the engine is the same 351 cubic ir.ch used in several standard Ford Products so, with normal driving, it should yield normal mileage. The Capri, currently celebrating its third birthday, is a lively little import from Germany (the Capri add writers call it sexy for some reason) that has done well in the y U.S., the people said. Its peppy and easy to drive. I like it. ' V-- 8 Lincoln-Mercur- One feature on the Capri that every car should have is a device that automatically turns off the headlights but leaves the parking lights on when the engine is switched Off. How many dead batteries would that have prevented during the past wiriter? I can count several including my own (Im not saying who was driving, but I wasnt, this time). The Capri is priced about a thousand dollars higher than the Pinto, VW and Gremlin. Put new tires on back VJ - The Tire Industry Safety WASHINGTON (UPI) Council reminds motorists that when they buy new tires they should be placed on the rear wheels. When selecting a pair of replacement tires in the same size and construction as already ontfie-lcar- , they should be put on the rear wheels for better, trattion artd handling, says Council Chairman Ross Ormsby. The council says that motorists surveys .have found that while tires are involved in less than one percent of all accidents, in the majority of these cases bald or dangerously worn tires were found on the rear of the vehicle. Firms win awards award-winnin- . . . Bingham quickly gathered several accounts and hired Madsen as a truck driver in the When he died in the mid-30his widow named Madsen as general manager. Later he became a working partner and still later was able to buy half of the business. In 1952 he bought her out completely and it became a family corporation. Today the business does a volume of around $3 million annually and is growing at about 15 percent a year. Main offices are in a new building at 965 Beardsly Ave., where it has a long assembly line (to assemble the packets of magazines) and an inventory of about 250,000 paperback books. 200-fo- In any event, he said, No dealer has to handle any magazine that he doesnt want to. Block booking, is absolutely a myth. He owns the store, runs it, rises or falls with it, and it would be ridiculous and unseemly to try to dictate to him what he should carry. Advertising. prepared the materials for the two city editor above, runs one of largest distribution outlets in Gillham Louis B. Bate the';-roa- d He hit flat out speeds of 100 miles peT.hoqr on the twisting track and gave me the biggest" thrift since my first ride on the Saltair roller coaster. The Pantera lacks nothing in pickup, speed or power. The power is transmitted through a heavy-dutclutch assembly to the backs, Louis B. Bate, 48, has been named city editor of the Deseret News, announced William B. Smart, editor and general manager. Bate will succeed Jerry P. Cahill, who has been city editor since 1967. Cahill has ac- . . . f That the Pantera weight distribution makes the car maneuverable and keeps it hugging on sharp turns at high speed was amply demonstrated when I took a ride around the Carlsbad Raceway1 wfthBdb Honduran, a veteran race driver, at the wheel. highly For that reason, Bonneville set up special book routes serviced by men who are trained titles and who work out of to spot bookmobile trucks containing 250 to 300 titles. 'News' names city editor and University after serving in the armored infantry during World War II He was bureau in Europe. chief in Price, then joined the city desk staff in 1951. He was an assistant city editor from 19J6 to 1968, when he was apeditor. pointed associate city He lives in Bountiful. v front-mounte- d south of Salt Lake City, and as far west as Tooele. State y other words, the motor is sitting right back of you m the not in the trunk space place the back seat should be Beetle, but in the back seat space. This arrangement, the Ford people told me, provides 41 percent front and 59 peroptimum weight distribution cent rear. A conventional sedan with engine has a weight distribution of 56 percent front and 44 percent rear. For book sales the routine is a bit different. Unlike a magazine, you cant tell readily whether a book on the rack is an old one or not. Store owners used to turn away the book salesmen, seeing their racks full of books but not realizing that they werent selling. Bonneville News covers a territory ranging Utah V-- 8 Lincoln-Mercur- fluto uuorld The result to the retailer, of course, is that he has a guaranteed sale of each item placed. Madsen returns the unsold magazines to the publishers. "from Bountiful on the north to Payson on the in 1950 ctsa Guaranteed sales tor been the target of various irate groups trying to ban some of the literature he handles. That bothers him, but he takes it in stride, as if to say that it goes with the job, even though he does exercise an amount of prior restraint in the materials he handles. said effi tey hr Inhrmailen: FIBSTTmr AL0AN Salt Ldk (Kf) io4i itSi City, Utah 355-741- 1 ENVIROTECH OPERATIONAL AUDITORS FINANCIAL ANALYSTS Rapidly expanding NYSE listed multinational has several exceptional opportunities available due to recent promotions at either the Lake corporate office in Menlo Park, Calif, or in Salt will be required. travel and Domestic foreign City. Successful candidates will have the following qualifications: degree with MBA andor CPA. 3 to 5 years experience in an industrial BS environment analyzing operations, products andor systems. Capacity for rapid growth and advancement. 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