A Message from Our CEO
Dear Vendor/Publisher,
Warm greetings
I want to let you know about dramatic changes underway at New Leaf as we reposition the company for a very different future. As you probably know, the decline in retail book sales through the ‘brick and mortar stores’ is even more exaggerated in what has been New Leaf’s traditional niche market. In response, we are adjusting our business model by adding more support for online retailers including consumer direct fulfillment, moving into more publisher services for smaller presses in our niche including eBooks, and becoming a master distributor that includes handling books outside of our niche. This may sound as though we are abandoning our traditional niche stores. Far from it: we also have a project underway to help them sell online by providing a “back end” solution that will allow them to sell our entire product line.
While most of the other smaller wholesalers have gone out of business, New Leaf has survived by remaining dynamic and maintaining a vision for the future. I know that many of you may be nervous about our viability. I want to assure you that New Leaf Distributing is making many changes for the extpress purpose of being around for the long run. Just a couple of months ago I hired Irv Myers as Executive VP and COO to help me implement these changes successfully. Irv has over thirty years at top levels in some of the largest companies in the industry; he would never have joined us if he did not see a bright future here.
We are also radically revising the ways we deliver product information to our customers. You will have many more options to advertise on our website, including context sensitive banners that come up while the user browses or searches. Our website is the favorite tool for most of our store buyers, and most are no longer using the annual print catalogs. Therefore, we will no longer be publishing these. We are also discontinuing Evolve! While it is still loved by many readers, the circulation has dropped dramatically, and it is no longer getting the sales results to justify the ad cost. We will continue with our monthly New Leaves Updates to which buyers still pay very close attention, but these will be our only printed publications. Many buyers report that they go through the Updates very carefully page by page. eLeaves, our weekly email newsletter, is also a tool buyers depend upon, and this has been also upgraded to afford more advertising opportunities. eFlyers and print flyers will continue. Details on all of these revisions to our promotions will be forthcoming.
New Leaf will no longer have a dedicated book buyer or a dedicated ad sales person. Yes, this means that both Judith Hawkins-Tillirson and Ginger Price have left the company. And with the discontuance of Evolve, Editor Debbie Hiers has also left. Needless to say this is very sad and painful for all of us. They are each dedicated, experienced and accomplished veterans and some of the most beloved people in our industry niche. I know that many of you have longstanding friendships with them. We will all miss them greatly.
Our buying team will need to rely much more heavily on you. We will no longer be able to meet one on one with reps for the most part. From now on, all book and recordings catalogs need to come to New Leaf with pages turned down and marked up with your title recommendations. These markups should include any special notes you might like to make and most importantly, our New Leaf subject codes. A guide to these codes can be found at www.newleafvendors.com/subjects. Please send marked up book catalogs to the attention of Karen Price and marked up recordings catalogs to Kelly Rowland. For publishers doing ONIX feeds, please be sure you are sending them to us. This will streamline our title entry immensely. For our requirements and details on how to provide us with ONIX feeds, please see www.newleafvendors.com/onix. For questions not covered there, please email onixinfo@newleaf-dist.com. Meanwhile, we are developing a web interface for title entry for vendors that do not provide ONIX. Once that is completed, all new titles without ONIX, will need to have that form completed before it can receive a New Leaf buy.
With only one print publication, the ad purchase process becomes much simpler. Our vendor website will be revised to make booking ads much more “self service” and to give complete information on the new web-based promotion opportunities.
I know many of you are also working through great changes. I think it’s a bit analogous to white water rafting: we’re riding a fierce current, trying to avoid the rocks and at times paddling like hell. This is a time when we must “paddle like hell” to implement necessary changes quickly. As always, we deeply value our trading relationship with you and appreciate how you have worked with us through the years. Thank you!
Toward a Bright New Future,
Alim Thompson
P.S. Consumer direct fulfillment is also available for vendors. If you are overextended doing your own fulfillment, we can help.
P.P.S. Should you wish to contact Judith, Debbie or Ginger: Judith, Judithht@bellsouth.net; Debbie, chaosranch@aol.com or 404-735-1171; Ginger, gingerpprice@bellsouth.net or 404-232-0546. | 
