Iowa Falls, Iowa—based Riverside Distributors has hired former Ingram Book Company/Spring Arbor v-p of product management Dick Malone in a newly created v-p of product purchasing position. Malone, who was laid off in June as part of a downsizing effort after a 23-year career at Ingram's Spring Arbor division (News, June 25), will manage Riverside's inventory and oversee the eight members of its purchasing department. Riverside serves more than 8,800 Christian retail accounts and carries products from 440 suppliers.
"The addition of Dick Malone to our management team means a tremendous growth opportunity for us," said Riverside president and CEO Skip Knapp.
Knapp led a management buy-out of Riverside from Chicago-based Jordan Industries in February, and since that time Riverside has restructured its distribution and Bible publishing units into two divisions and ramped up its product database from 50,000 to 103,000. According to Knapp, 50,000 of those are books and 6,000 are Bibles. Riverside, which Knapp said aims to be "the one-stop special-order replenishment distributor" for the CBA industry, carries products from a wide range of categories, including music, church supplies, audio, video, gifts and sportswear.
