New Wholesaler BookStream Plans to Open in the Late Fall

BookStream, a new wholesaler based in Poughkeepsie, New York, recently announced its intent to open sometime in the late fall. The company's president is Jack Herr, a former distribution executive for Random House, who founded the business with partner Rich Stone. Herr told BTW that his first mission as president of BookStream is to "level the playing field for the independent bookseller ... and be a profitable business." The ultimate goal is to be "most competitive wholesaler bar none."

BookStream, said Herr, will be "offering a 42 percent discount across the board to every bookseller, regardless of their size or sales volume. That is the same discount that is offered [by other wholesalers] to larger independents ... and chains." With the discount, Herr hopes to attract small to mid-size bookstores to the fold.

To start, BookStream will service any bookstore within a "two-day reach" via UPS, which, in addition to the northeast, includes Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, and South Carolina, though ultimately, he said, the company will look to extend its reach. Booksellers will receive free freight on orders of $150 or more in shipped value. The company will operate out of a 100,000-square-foot-plus warehouse in the Poughkeepsie Business Park, a couple miles outside the city's center. Poughkeepsie is located about 85 miles north of New York City and is an area "with a solid base of independent bookstores," Herr noted.

Last month two popular book distributors -- Koen and Alamo -- shut their doors, and some might argue that opening a small book wholesaling company is a risky venture. But Jack Herr said he sees a market opportunity and is confident that BookStream will see the rewards.

Since he and Stone conceived the idea to open a wholesaler some four or five years ago, Herr said, he has developed a technology that will help the company be extremely competitive in the marketplace. "Our objective is to fund that technology over the next couple of years," he explained.

Additionally, rather than "expand horizontally" by servicing retailers such as supermarkets or media-oriented chains, "we are going to focus on [expanding] vertically on independent businesses," Herr reported.

Joining Herr and Stone at BookStream will be Maury McClelland, formerly of Koen, who will be BookStream's vice president of sales and marketing; Ken Abramson, formerly of Koen, as buyer; and Felice Farrell, formerly a bookseller with Ariel Booksellers in New Paltz, New York, as buyer.