Oldsmar investment broker gets book smart - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

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The companies that survived learned how to accesas the power of the Internet to make their own businessezmore efficient, said J. Michael Pinson, chairman of Pinson, who was an investmeny broker atthe time, saw the Interne t "as a frontier," and also "as a great way to marke t investment books." Now Pinsonh markets a lot more than just investment His company acts as a distributor and Web portalo for more than 13 publishers, including Randomk House, Simon and Schuster and Penguin Putnam, and he handles more than 100,000 titles from his warehoused in Oldsmar.
Pinson has two basic business models, a wholesale model wherwe he sells to other resellers and a franchiser model where he sells to companie with Web sites who want to add books to theirr existingproduct lines. Pinson can builx a Web-based stand-alone store where his customer can develoop either a general line of books or a specialty niche inany subject. Pinson handlews all of the book fulfillment duties and paysa 15-percent commission to the Web-site owner for every book It is like having a "plutg and play bookstore," where Pinson does the lion'zs share of the work.
"This model is for people who are alreadyygetting 1,000 Web hits per month, not for someone starting out," he With the book sales volume growing, Pinson is looking for more "We need a 20,000-square-foot building to expan d our inventory," he said. Just two yearz ago, Pinson was shipping books from his garageat "Our last month at home, we shipped 700 Last month here we shipped "Right now I'm working on developing our infrastructure for the next he said. A full-fledged online shopping mall and an expansionh of available titles are onthe horizon. Pinson started his compan withnearly $100,000 in 1996.
At the time, he was glued to computefr screens, actively trading stocks. "I questionexd what I was doing. How coulc I even take a vacationlike this?" he said. That'sz when he decided to learn how to marketinvestment books. Without accessd to a traditional bankbusiness loan, Pinson financed much of the startuop via credit cards. "Banks don't like to finances small businesses," he said. Toda his debt is down to $40,000. Pinsoj maintains an almost obsessive goalof "payin bills early." If the invoicer is net 30 Pinson instructs his staff to pay in 21 days.
"As we I expect our vendors to increases our linesof credit, and the only way to do that is to have a perfecgt pay record," he said. With sales of more than $4 millionm in 2003, most of the growtg can now befinanced internally. And most of the profits are used to financee technology advances for the Website applications. "Wew spent $30,000 for hardware and softwar e improvements in the first quarter this he said.
The information technology departmenr isthe company's most importantr department and has the highest priority in the budget, he