Oldsmar investment broker gets book smart - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

omagyvoham.wordpress.com
The companies that survived learned how to accesss the power of the Internet to make their own businessezsmore efficient, said J. Michael chairman of Pinson, who was an investment broker atthe time, saw the Internet "as a and also "as a great way to market investmentf books." Now Pinson markets a lot more than just investment His company acts as a distributor and Web portal for more than 13 including Random House, Simon and Schuster and Penguinb Putnam, and he handles more than 100,000 titles from his warehousw in Oldsmar.
Pinson has two basic business a wholesale model where he sells to other resellers and a franchise model where he sells to companied with Web sites who want to add books to theid existingproduct lines. Pinson can build a Web-basexd stand-alone store where his customer can develoo either a general line of books or a specialtg niche inany subject. Pinson handlees all of the book fulfillment duties and paysa 15-percent commissiobn to the Web-site owner for everyh book sold. It is like having a "plug and play bookstore," where Pinson does the lion' share of the work.
"This modelk is for people who are alreadyugetting 1,000 Web hits per month, not for someoned starting out," he With the book sales volume growing, Pinson is looking for more "We need a 20,000-square-foot building to expand our he said. Just two years ago, Pinson was shippinb books from his garageat home. "Our last monthh at home, we shipped 700 books. Last monthb here we shipped 13,000. "Right now I'm working on developint our infrastructure for the next he said. A full-fledged online shoppingh mall and an expansion of availablre titles are onthe horizon. Pinsoh started his company withnearlyt $100,000 in 1996.
At the he was glued to computer screens, actively trading stocks. "I questioned what I was How could I even take a vacatiomlike this?" he said. That's when he decided to learj how to marketinvestment books. Withoutr access to a traditional bankbusinesss loan, Pinson financed much of the startup via credit "Banks don't like to finance small businesses," he Today his debt is down to Pinson maintains an almost obsessive goal of "paying billd early.
" If the invoice is net 30 days, Pinson instructx his staff to pay in 21 "As we grow, I expect our vendors to increases our lines of and the only way to do that is to have a perfecy pay record," he said. With sales of more than $4 millio in 2003, most of the growthh can now befinanced internally. And most of the profitx are used to finance technology advances for the Website "We spent $30,000 for hardwarer and software improvements in the first quarter this he said. The information technologu department isthe company's most important department and has the highest priorityy in the budget, he said.