Footprint Press Adds Ancillary Business

When Sue Freeman and her husband, Rich, left their jobs as corporate executives at Kodak in the late 1990s, they spent half a year hiking the Appalachian Trail, then tried a new set of trails near their home in the Rochester region of New York State. Sue wrote and Rich took the pictures for their first guide, Take a Hike! Family Walks in the Finger Lakes and Genesee Valley Region. They didn't intend to open a publishing company. "We kind of backed into it," said Sue, who now handles marketing and publicity for seven-year-old Footprint Press in Fishers, N.Y., and has written all but three of the 14 books on the press's backlist. Rich creates the maps and pictures for their books and handles sales and customer service.

Although Footprint was profitable from the start, the Freemans wanted to be able to vary their product offerings. Their initial experiments with add-ons had only minimal sales: they included a screensaver of New York waterfalls to go with their 200 Waterfalls in Central and Western New York and an embroidered patch for Gary Fallesen's Peak Experiences: Hiking the Highest Summits in New York, County by County. But in 2000, Rich designed a set of Plexiglas stands for counter displays of Footprint's outdoor recreation guides, and the Freemans found the right complementary business, DisplayStands4You.com. "First-year sales began slow," said Sue, "then jumped over 200% in the second year. At the end of the third year, sales have again increased 80%."

The Freemans manufacture six styles of Plexiglas stands for books, magazines and CDs and sell them exclusively over the Internet at both FootprintPress.com and DisplayStands4You.com. In addition, the Freemans buy pallets of plain white cardboard dumps, which they then assemble and resell to publishers and other businesses looking for small quantities of floor displays, typically sold in lots of 500 or more. In the past year, the display stands have contributed significantly to Footprint's overall sales. "The book business is a tough business in terms of margins," said Sue. "What we found is, as we add more titles it doesn't necessarily increase revenue on a regular basis and it increased our inventory costs. If we didn't have the bookstands, we would have had a dip in revenues last year."

In 2003, the Freemans published just one book, but they plan to bring out at least two titles in March: Take a Paddle: Finger Lakes, New York: Quiet Water for Canoes & Kayaks and Take a Paddle: Western New York: Quiet Water for Canoes & Kayaks. They are also readying the manuscript for a driving-tour guide of cobblestone buildings for publication in the fall.