Barefoot Books, which has offices in Cambridge, Mass., and Bath, England, is celebrating its first decade in business by continuing to explore new growth areas.
Next month it will launch a direct selling division in the U.S. and revamp a similar Barefoot Stallholder program in the U.K., which it piloted three years ago. In addition, this fall Barefoot will introduce its first licensed product produced by Galison, a dominoes game based on Clare Beaton's One Moose, Twenty Mice.
Barefoot has also recently completed transferring its inventory to its new U.S. distributor, Baker & Taylor's Distribution Solutions Group; in England, it has moved from commission reps to Bounce! Sales & Marketing.
At the heart of these changes lies a branding impulse not unlike that of another U.K. press known for distinctive high-end titles, DK Publishing. "We want to keep the Barefoot name front and center," Barefoot president and cofounder Nancy Traversy told PW. "The reason I came [to the U.S.] was to preserve the integrity of our strategy as a small press. In the U.K., Barefoot is known as a grassroots small business doing things in a new way. In the U.S., the people we hired only knew endcaps, Borders and Barnes & Noble, selling in a traditional way."
It has taken two "turbulent years," according to Traversy, to reposition Barefoot. Just weeks before September 11, she moved the U.S. offices from New York City to Cambridge, and moved stateside herself. Within months of the move, Barefoot opened its first retail outlet, Barefoot Books children's bookstore in North Cambridge. This summer Traversy decided it was time to move the offices again, this time closer to the bookstore. The bookstore has also helped spur sales of the publishing unit, primarily with branding and as a laboratory to test ideas.
The bookstore's role could become even larger in the weeks ahead, with the introduction of Barefoot's direct selling plan later in September. Traversy is considering holding "Stallholder meetings" at the store. An area of the Barefoot Web site (www.barefootbooks.com) will also be set aside for Stallholders to check inventory and download sales materials.
Traversy hopes to avoid the pitfalls that made DK's party program unpopular with independents and financially unsuccessful. She plans to use the same catalogue for both markets and to cap Stallholders' discounts at 30%. Traversy sees direct selling as a way to give Barefoot more opportunities to get its books out into the marketplace and to get cash up-front. "Our whole philosophy is, you need to give people a choice," she said. "Stallholders basically run their own mini-businesses and sell from the home. We've already had several hundred people approach us. Right now people are looking for ways to earn money. We can recruit through the store." The switch to Baker & Taylor is also key to the Stallholder program. "They're used to small packages," said Traversy. "We couldn't do direct selling where we were."
Meanwhile, Traversy has begun to restaff. "The team I have now," she said, "is a lot of young creative people who don't come with any preconceived expectations." In the U.K., Barefoot has closed its London office and consolidated its operations in a new office in Bath.
Now, said Traversy, "the building blocks are in place. We are poised for a lot of growth in a measured way" with sales projected to increase 40% this year. Total revenue in 2002 was $4 million.
