A Chat with August’s Profile, Chris Harris, director, direct response marketing, Becker Group Direct

CS: In particular, what’s transpired in New York and the possibility of more states following New York’s lead?
CH: Oh yeah, I think so. Also, keep in mind that to place that kind of burden on a large business is problematic. But one of the great things about the direct marketing space and catalogers and Web sites is there aren’t as many barriers to entry. You can be a small guy, and when I say a “small” guy, a few people with a limited amount of resources, and build up a business and have some success with it. When you have to start collecting and worrying about all the various taxes and kind of keeping up with all of the various states’ regulations and taxes, you have to hire additional people and personnel. And it becomes almost as problematic and time-consuming to keep up with that kind of information as it does just actually producing these channels, and producing a product to sell. And consequently, it’ll push out and hurt growth from an entrepreneurial standpoint.
That’s a very dangerous thing for any government to do — to put a cap on or punish entrepreneurs. It’s the entrepreneurs who are constantly reinventing our economy and reinventing the way we do business. That’s why you have such a turnover every decade in the Fortune 500. You have the big companies that essentially get so big and they lose touch with their consumers. And you have these little guys come along and build and build and build. All of a sudden they become mid-size businesses and then huge businesses. And they take the place of these old, massive companies.
It helps because they’ve understood how to customize and personalize the relationship with their particular consumers or clients, and deliver a product to the marketplace in a timely, cost-friendly way. By punishing the direct marketing space, where there’s so much entrepreneurship that takes place, so much innovation and out-of-the-box thinking, you can really have a negative impact. But I don’t believe that the folks who are writing this legislation that that’s really much of a concern to them.