|
|
The book business as we know it today started with John Saunders in 1963, as an off shoot of his dad’s stationary and office equipment store. Jack Saunders originally started with a photography shop and studio in 1945 after returning from the war.
John started with a small workspace at the back of the store by taking selections of books out to the local schools for them to have a look at and then place orders.
The catalyst to future successes came when John made an arrangement with a few larger publishers in Toronto, to stock quantities of titles, which allowed him to take selections of books into the schools.
John, at that point, was a one-man show doing all of the selling, stock ordering, deliveries, and invoicing, etc. The space was quickly outgrown and staff were hired. In 1966, an old house at 48 Ste. Marie Street was purchased and the book division moved there.
The business continued to grow and the company was moved to 199 Campbell St.
This location is now completely devoted to a call center for Smart Apple Media, Knowbuddy Marketing and Windfall Books and encompasses 7,200 square feet.
In 1970, we were a wholesaler selling library books from many distributors and to schools and public libraries. We had 3 sales people and 7 or 8 people in the office. We were covering counties close to home as well as Northern Ontario, but we continued to go farther and farther a field. We grew to be one of the larger Canadian wholesalers with a presence right across the country. In 1985, after several years of trying, John made the change from wholesaler to exclusive publisher’s agent.
The first publisher that we became an agent for was Gareth Stevens, who John met at a book fair in Frankfurt and later made an agreement with. This was a significant deal for both John and Gareth. This was our first agency from which the rest followed and for Gareth he had yet to print his first book. As we continued to grow we caught the attention of other U.S. publishers.
We then signed with Rourke Publishing, Creative Education and Rosen Publishing. At this point it was much easier to acquire new lines. We currently represent over 20 U.S., U.K., Canadian and Australian publishers.
With the addition of all these lines, John decided to start Knowbuddy Resources in 1993. Knowbuddy started out as a direct mail preview company but soon the books were sold by our sales representatives and by telemarketing with the formation of Knowbuddy Marketing.
In 1990, we purchased a grocery store building of 10,000 square feet in Heathcote as a warehouse which allowed us to expand our telemarketing division, originally headed up by Lynne Doughty. Lynne has been the driving force ever since. We had outgrown our current warehouse and were unable to take on any new lines until we expanded.
We started telemarketing in Canada in 1988. Through our association with Creative Education and Tom Peterson, we started entering the U.S. market in 1991 which has continued to grow.
In 1988 another major development occurred. We started to computerize our business through the efforts of Gord Kerr working on a part-time basis from Carleton Place. Gord now works full-time plus and his efforts have helped us to grow and prosper.
In 1998, we purchased the current office and warehouse building at 27, 29 Stewart Road. In 2002, we added 5,000 square feet to house a new telemarketing company Lookout Books, managed by Debbie Chatwin (Saunders). We have in total at Stewart Road 15,000 square feet of warehouse and 8,000 square feet of offices. In 2003 James Saunders started J.Appleseed serving Canadian classrooms with paperbacks geared toward leveled non-fiction reading. This company continues to grow both through telemarketing and direct sales.
Currently, along with Debbie, Gord and Lynne the other managers who make us tick are Judy Purdy, our General Manager; James Saunders, V.P. of Direct Sales; Dennis Jackel, our Warehouse Manager; Carol Saunders who is our Director of Marketing, Sean Pearson, Manager of Preview Sales at Stewart Rd.; and Ian Kerr Business Systems Manager.
In 2001, we rented 3,000 square feet of space in Toronto on Martin Grove Road (near the airport) as a showroom then in the summer of 2003 we expanded it to 6,000 square feet to accommodate J.Appleseed.
In 2004, we purchased 80 Sandford Fleming, which is a commercial building with 2,400 square feet office space and 6,400 square feet warehouse space. Currently our warehousing for Canadian telemarketing is done there.
In 2008 we expanded our publishing program with 300 paperback titles under the Saunders Book Company imprint. In 2009 the imprint will continue to grow with an additional 280 titles. Future plans include expanding our electronic presence with websites supporting all telemarketing divisions and online ordering for jappleseed.ca.
Of course Saunders is a family company starting with John’s Dad Jack and Mother Bessie. It currently includes daughters Laurie Fryer and Debbie Chatwin, son Sean Pearson, nephew James Saunders, and wife Carol Saunders. There are 11 grandchildren…. so who knows what the future may bring.
Beyond direct family, Saunders has always been run like a big family and hopefully most of the time happy and we hope it remains this way well into the future.
|
|
|
|
|