Lindley is the owner of Denver Bookbinding, which binds and rebinds textbooks and periodicals.
Compared with last year, our sales are still down. But due to an alliance we made with a yearbook-publishing company out of Colorado Springs, it appears sales will be up about 10 percent for May.
We started to take every Friday morning to market our service to Colorado school districts. Even though Denver Bookbinding is 80 years old this year, purchasing agents didn’t know we existed. So we worked to change this. I hope this will pay off this summer.
We have not made any additional cost cuts. We cut them to the bone starting last September. We’ve actually hired a part-time staff member in our cover- making department. Now we are at 14.5 employees.
We have created alliances with companies in our line of business. So by pooling our skills and specialized equipment, I predict that each company will gain a larger part of the market and help stop the export of printing and binding dollars out of state. In our industry, for every dollar that stays in the state, it will multiply 3.12 times.
We’ve had some other good news. Out of the blue, Real Simple magazine included us in an article about how to control clutter by binding magazines. And we are encouraged by the support we’re getting in Leadville for a crafts-and-history weekend we are putting together at the end of June.
I feel the economy on the whole will not show improvement for another year. Our legislature for the most part proved to be anti-business this session, and I hope in the next session legislators realize job growth comes from small businesses.
If companies can hold on for another year, then they have made it through the ugly times.
Emotionally, it’s been a roller coaster. We try to take one week at a time. Sometimes it’s one day at a time. We want to become stronger through this recession and dissect our operations. Our staff is a solid core that creates a foundation for survival.
