COMPANY & INDUSTRY
The company was organized by the consolidation of two providers of services to retailers of magazines and other periodicals in 1995. Through it's subsequent acquisitions of businesses and technologies it has been able to expand the services offered to it's clients and enhanced it's support of current services provided.
There are approximately 125 employees and business operations are conducted from 11 office facilities located in Missouri, New York, Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Woodstock, Georgia and Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
More and more, magazine publishers are realizing the importance of revenues from single copies of magazines sold at retail stores and the company believes this will continue because:
1. Subscription distribution mailing costs continue to rise and
2. Advertisers value the increased target market accuracy obtained through retail sales.
The largest sales of magazines are from grocery retailers and mass merchandise stores such as Walmart, Target, etc. These retailers usually display magazines in two locations within the store:
1. a dedicated section for all magazines and
2. by the checkout areas, also known as "pockets".
Magazines are frequently purchased on impulse and publishers increasingly compete for display spaces at the checkout area.
For incentive purposes publishers enter into programs in which the store receives a cash rebate directly from them, quarterly, based on actual net sales of the publisher's titles upon submission of a claim.
Also, some publishers rent space from the store(s) to display their magazines. This rent, also known as "pocket payments", is a fixed amount per pocket, per store and is paid quarterly.
National distributors usually administer most of these incentive programs. There are also programs to upgrade the magazine displays in the stores by providing a one-time incentive payment to the store from the publishers.
The Source Information Management Company is a provider of merchandise management information and related services primarily in connection with the display and marketing of magazines and other periodicals. They assist retailers in monitoring, documenting, claiming and collecting incentive payments and perform consulting and other services in exchange for service revenues.
Merchandising revenue is obtained 1) from consulting and other services on an "other than commmission basis" and 2) the sale, as principal or broker, of merchandise to the stores for them to sell to the public. |
