What is the East Tennessee Trade Group – ETTG?
 
East Tennessee Trade Group is a remainder book wholesale company located in Madisonville, Tennessee. We do sideline items, gift items, stationery products, a lot of dollar store items from time to time, but primarily we deal in remainder books.
 
When did you launch ETTG?
 
We went strictly wholesale in 1997.
 
Do you have any partners?
 
Yes, I have one partner, Stan Mitchell.
 
How did you get into this business?
 
I opened my first bookstore in 1986 in Charleston, South Carolina. I was working for my brother-in-law, Dan Mendenhall at the time. Back in 1986 there were no outlet malls along the interstate like there are today. It wasn’t even an industry. There were practically no discount bookstores. We opened a bookstore for what started out to be just the Christmas season in December 1986. In the first 30 days we were open we did $236,000 in sales with no book priced over three bucks. One store led to about ten in a year and to several people who wanted to buy books from us. That’s really how it all got started.
 
So Dan was one of the early pioneers in what is now a burgeoning bargain book business in the South, correct?
 
Yes. Dan Mendenhall and about four or five other men including Ricky Perritt’s Dad (Spencer Perritt of S& L Sales), Dan Weiner in New York, and a handful of others were dealing in discount books in a very big way. I would say Dan was probably the biggest one of the handful at that time.
 
What happened after that initial successful foray into temporary sales in 1986? Did you continue with the temporary sales?
 
Yes. I worked with my brother-in-law for a number of years. Then he got out of the book business and got into the discount retail business through 1992. I had a series of retail stores where we did temporary sales for about three to four years.
As my son got older and retail got older, I realized that I was in my mid-forties and had never had a job where I was off on weekends. So I decided to shutdown all of our retail operations and we went strictly to wholesale.
Books had always been my favorite thing and the most consistent thing that I liked and the area that I had the most knowledge of also, so we decided to focus all of our energies on wholesaling books.
 
So that change from retail to wholesale marked the beginning of ETTG?
 
Yes.
 
Why did you decide to base your business in Madisonville, which is a rural community in East Tennessee? Do you live there?
 
No. I live in Knoxville. Many people have asked me why I have a warehouse in Madisonville. It’s only about a 30-minute drive from my home and eggs are cheaper in the country and warehouses are too. That’s the primary reason we are here.
 
You are about to open a new warehouse, correct?
 
Yes. In mid-July we are moving into a brand new, 30,000-square-foot facility on the same property in Madisonville. It will have 30-foot eaves and be a much larger warehouse. We are also going to do some third party warehousing and fulfillment out of that location.
 
What do you buy – hurts, remainders, and promotional books?
 
We buy all of it, plus sideline items. Actually though, I buy very few hurts and bid mostly on remainders.
 
Do you specialize in a particular area?
 
We do all categories but I tell people that we sell the “three C’s.” That’s children’s’, cooking, and crafts. But we probably have as good a home improvement line as any wholesale company there is. I’d say, gardening, home improvement and the three C’s are our strong suits.
 
How many customers do you have?
 
We have just under 1,000 accounts.
 
Do you have a typical customer?
 
We sell to everyone from flea market vendors up to the major chains. At the current time we have no minimums.
 
Can you tell us about the biggest deal you ever purchased?
 
The single largest one title deal I ever purchased was 97,000 copies. We purchased 97,000 copies of an Anne Geddes book called Baby Names Keepsakes. It was a beautiful book. All of her books are very choice books. Actually I was in the black within 30 minutes on that one.
 
What about the largest overall deal?
 
The largest deal that I have purchased  was in December of 2001. I purchased 511,000 hardcover books from Creative Publishing. It was the Black & Decker, Singer, Hunting and Fishing Library.
 
Do you have a sales force or do you primarily sell by yourself?
 
At this time I do all the buying and selling. Currently I am hiring a lady in Canada, and one to do three states in the upper Midwest.
 
When the new warehouse is up and running, how many employees will you have?
 
Approximately 12.
 
You started a new trade show last year, ONBOARD. Tell us how that came about.
 
Well, that period of the months of August and September is the Christmas season for the wholesale book industry. That’s when people are buying books for their fourth quarter. For three or four years, there were several vendors that I am close to who kept talking about doing a show at this time of the year for people buying fourth quarter. It just makes so much sense that the largest buying season of the year should have a show for people to order books from.
The success of this show is nothing that I am doing magically. It is strictly the time of year. I had three vendors tell me it was the best show that they had been to and several others that said it was definitely in their top five. For a first year show to accomplish that is unheard of. Like I said, I didn’t do anything special. This is strictly a show for the book wholesalers. That’s the only reason I did it. For six weeks we e-mail lists, fax lists, send samples, make phone calls, and make personal visits trying to get people’s orders for their fourth quarters. That’s their largest order of the year.
 
You mentioned that the initial show was successful. Do you base that on the number of attendees or the number of orders?
 
Our list of attendees was not what they have at the Spring Book Show or CIROBE, but the average order was far higher at our show. That’s what made last year’s show such a success. At our show the average order was far bigger than it normally is at the other shows.
 
When and where is this year’s ONBOARD Remainder Tradeshow?
 
It is August 6 – 9. Set-up is on Wednesday and the show begins at noon on Thursday the 7^th. It is at the Nashville Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, which is adjacent to the Renaissance Hotel.
 
How many vendors are expected?
 
Approximately 50.
 
How many buyers do you anticipate?
 
Significantly more than last year. That’s about all I can say. We had about 320 last year that registered.
 
As a seller, are trade shows important to you and why?
 
I have always looked at this business in this way: you need two circles of people. You need people to buy from and you need people to sell to. When you go to a trade show your name is in a book. Most of the trade shows also have a website. People go to those websites and get those tradeshow books. So I get e-mail lists and boxes of samples all the time from publishers that I have never heard of or talked to. You’re increasing that circle when you go to trade shows. Then every show you go to, obviously, you find new people to sell to. You are always going to have people falling out of those two circles so you have to keep putting new people into those two circles. People retire, close their business down, or get out of the business for whatever reason. Trade shows help keep you going.
 
With the increasing influence of the Internet in this business, do you think trade shows will continue to retain their value to book wholesalers?
 
Yes, a trade show is valuable not simply for the sales. A trade show is your single greatest asset for putting people in those circles. I didn’t start this show to get into the trade show business. I am in the book wholesale business and that is the only reason that this show was created.
I didn’t want to spend two months of my year, every year, chasing down people for Christmas orders. Come and let’s do it in three days, get it over with, and get on with life. It’s much better for the buyer. Buyers, for the most part, if they are a significant buyer, like visiting other cities. They don’t like spending eight hours behind a desk looking at e-mail lists and asking for samples. They want to physically come look at the book.
 
Why is seeing a book in person so important?
 
Why are most books sold in bookstores not online? Because people want to actually look and touch and read the inside cover of the book to see what it is about. That is how they make a decision about buying a book. In the same way you are going to have more books sold at a trade show than you are by sending out an e-mail list or having a website.
 
What is the business philosophy you try to live by?
 
I think that any buyer that looks at my booth and sees the samples that I have for sale, they know that if they place an order they will receive books in the same condition. We try not to deal in hurt books. The hurt books that I purchase are screened carefully. If they don’t meet a certain criteria, I don’t order them a second time.
We try to deliver a very good quality book and I will put my prices up against anyone.
 
What is your favorite book and why?
 
Other than the Bible, my favorite is See You at the Top by Zig Ziegler because it talks not only about being successful but also about being honest and ethical in business.
 
How about your favorite movie?
 
I have several favorites including Top Gun and A Few Good Men. But if I had to name one it would be The Shawshank Redemption. The message there is that even though bad things can happen to you in life, if you believe in yourself and stay positive, good things will happen and you will triumph.
 
Maryellen Duckett is a Tennessee-based freelance writer for National Geographic Traveler, Family Fun, and On the Road with Hampton magazines. She and her husband, Randall, are co-authors of the family travel books 100 Secrets of the Smokies and 100 Secrets of the Carolina Coast (Rutledge Hill Press).