Best Door for Today’s Best Outcome

Have you ever sold 250,000 copies of anything? Me, neither, until the early 1990’s. One of, if not THE, leading consumer mail order catalog companies at that time was the Lillian Vernon Catalog. Among the many items they sold were products used by the many professional organizing and productivity industry service providers. Because of that, the catalog company held a corporate membership in the industry’s professional association, NAPO, National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals .Their representative, David Hochberg, was one of Lillian’s sons, and Vice President of the company, responsible for promotion and publicity.

At the association’s annual conference shortly after I launched my tips booklet, 110 Ideas for Organizing Your Business Life, it was very likely David would be there. I was more than a little eager to show him my new publication to see what he thought, and hear what he might say.

David is a native New Yorker, and I am originally an East Coaster. As he flipped the pages of my booklet, in his fastest-paced New York-ese, he said “this is great; you ought to license us a quarter of a million copies, somewhere between, x and 2x.”

My response (as I hung on every syllable coming out of his mouth) was “You know, David, I was just thinking of that,” which I was, right then and there as I captured every answer to whatever question I might have on how to have this interaction manifest into a sale.

A week went by immediately after that conference, allowing each of us to catch up with whatever happened while we were each away. I called him (early 90’s – email wasn’t a thing yet.) and offered the price per unit of 1X. After all, he did say somewhere between x and 2x. 1x was right in the middle between those two. He volleyed with “x or no sale.”

That took all of about a quarter of a second to accept his counter offer as I quickly did the math. 250,000 copies at x equaling a five-digit amount of money , and the credibility enhancer of having the Lillian Vernon Catalog company as a client. And away we went.

My company was granting their company the right to print 250,000 copies of my booklet. A formal legal licensing agreement pinpointed the terms of this deal. That contract and a floppy disk (imagine that) with the tips booklet file on it was the entire transaction. One thing amazed and delighted me almost more than all that this sale delivered.Their corporate intellectual property attorney, made a few improvements in the legalese – to my company’s advantage!!

The reason I was granting very specific and limited reprint rights was that they could buy print cheaper than I could sell it to them. Not only were they a print catalog, that year they were distributing 17 MILLION catalogs to their lists. That 250,000 was a test for them once you realize that context.

They positioned the printed booklet in a familiar business model. It was offered as a gift with any purchase in one issue of their catalog that year. They generously shared certain metrics they so thoroughly monitored. The statistics included increased transaction size, growth of current and of new customers, and from which segmented catalog they pulled those statistics. This arrived on their letterhead.

A particular statistic that stays permanently imprinted in my mind is that they had a 13% sales increase from their list of prior customers that was tracked directly back to offering my booklet. I can only guess how many multiples of their original investment in our licensing deal they made back.

This deal was the first license I did. It was a case of the transaction finding me rather than me searching for it. Showing someone I already knew what I had that might benefit their business is what I did. Becoming extraordinarily attentive to all that he said was crucial. I had no business background at all at that point, and never worked in a corporation. I didn’t know corporate-speak or corporate architecture like quarterly promotional campaigns. David Hochberg taught me a whole lot in less than five minutes. Licensing reprint rights is only one of many different kinds of licensing (renting out) your content in exchange for payment.

Since the time of this deal, the Lillian Vernon Catalog company has been sold after the founder passed away, and her son, David, moved on, bringing his brilliance and experience to other interests. I will be forever grateful to David for the opportunity he provided in that sale.