Koen-Levy Closed

by Judith Rosen, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 2/20/2007

While the Koen Book Distributors bankruptcy filed in July 2005 continues to wend its way through the courts, yesterday Levy Home Entertainment pulled the plug on the year-old book regional wholesaling operation that grew out of it. Koen-Levy Book Wholesalers was run out of Koen's former New Jersey warehouse using much of the same staff.

"We decided the business was not performing as anticipated, and it would not make its numbers in the foreseeable future," Levy president and CEO Carol Kloster and senior v-p and CFO Steve Carlson told PW Daily. Most, if not all, the employees will be laid off, and publishers will be paid in full. Kloster and Carlson anticipate that it will take 90 days to fully close the facility.

In an e-mail announcement, Jim Di Miero, senior sales and marketing manager for Koen-Levy, attributed the closing to timing. "Trying to establish a new startup organization during a tough bookselling period proved to be too high a hurdle," he said. Some industry watchers regard the closure as part of LHE's renewed emphasis on its core business, as marked by the appointment of Kloster as president and CEO last fall. In addition, LHE is looking west—it opened an office in San Diego, Calif., as part of its efforts to capture the warehouse club business of bankrupt Advanced Marketing Services.