A Chat with June’s Profile, David Lorsch, founder, president and CEO, DBL Distributing Inc.

CS: How did you grow the company?
Lorsch: We’d originally taken a mailing list of audio retailers and video retailers. The third list was taken in a recovery campaign from some local photo dealers. So we added photo and camcorder accessories to the catalog. We aimed at selling one to three-store operations. We started mailing the catalog into 13 western states. Over the next, let’s call it four years, we slowly moved east, taking down three or four states at a time. I was national by 1994. It was always very interesting that as we took new states, the catalog was always where we got good response. As a wholesale cataloger, we’re dealing with repetitive business. Our catalog response against our mailing list is 40 percent.