Dick Youngblood: Customized maps charted a steady path to success

It took Larry Charboneau 20 years to build his revenue to $800,000 with a business that generated street and road data used by school districts, government agencies and business to pinpoint locations, plan delivery routes and determine distances.

Then, seeking a growth surge in 1998, he jumped into the competitive arena of map and road atlas publishing -- but with a strategy that avoided confronting Rand McNally and the other industry giants.

Focusing on map and atlas products that are custom-designed for specific businesses and organizations, he hoisted sales at an annual rate of 16.2 percent in the ensuing eight years, to $2.7 million by 2006.

And thanks to several recent additions, the company is on track to reach $3.9 million this year -- a 44 percent jump that would boost the annual growth rate above 19 percent.

Welcome to the Lawrence Group, an Oakdale company that is counting nearly 70 percent of its revenue from products introduced since 1998.

"There wouldn't have been much growth without the maps," said Charboneau, who also owns half of a local firm that publishes the King's street atlas for the Twin Cities.

His growth strategy began with the idea of "finding a niche with a large, loyal customer base," said Charboneau, 66. "And you can't find a more loyal fan base than NASCAR's." That was the beginning:

• In 1998 he negotiated a licensing agreement to use the NASCAR brand on a road atlas that highlights race schedules and pinpoints sanctioned racetracks on each state map. Marketing the books in convenience-store chains and via Lowe's home improvement stores, the company sold more than 200,000 of them in 2006.

• In 1999, Charboneau added a foldout map, featuring racing schedules and track locations that NASCAR sponsors could distribute at racing events. Today, 40 racing sponsors, including DuPont, Toyota, Kellogg and General Motors are buying the customized maps.

• In 2002 he added a noncustomized road atlas, but with a marketing strategy that still avoided confronting the industry giants: Instead of selling through mass merchants like Target and Wal-Mart, where the big boys ruled, he focused on smaller chains such as Menards, Big Lots closeout stores and the Dollar General chain. The company sold 800,000 of the atlases in 2006 and is on track to unload 1.2 million this year.

• In 2005, Charboneau was contacted by Jordan Outdoor Enterprises, a manufacturer of camouflage hunting clothing, with the idea of producing a hunter's road atlas that located public hunting areas and identified hunting guides available in every state. The company sold 100,000 of the atlases via major sporting goods chains in 2006 and is on track to peddle 160,000 of them this year.

• Late in 2006 the company added a customized road atlas designed as a promotional gift that corporate clients could give to their customers. The atlas has been sold so far to Eden Prairie transportation logistics company C.H. Robinson.

Not bad, considering that Charboneau had no idea of becoming a map publisher when he started the company in 1977. At the time he was a graphic designer for a market research firm, hand-drawing maps that incorporated demographic data for banking chains planning new branch locations.

Through a friend, he was contacted by the Burnsville school district, which complained that its bus routing was complicated by the lack of a single street map that covered the six communities in which the district was located.

Charboneau not only provided a consolidated street map, but also mined city plat books and demographic data to add specific home addresses and data about student locations to help the district determine the best pickup points and most efficient bus routes.

His client list climbed to 35 school districts by 1986, when the Rosemount district bought software to automate its bus-routing system and asked Charboneau to supply his street data in electronic form.

That's what nudged him into the world of "geographic information systems," the business of creating electronic mapping data that client SimonDelivers uses to plan its routes and the Davanni's pizza chain needs to guide its delivery system.

That's not all: The Lawrence Group also takes demographic data from the Census Bureau to help, say, Davanni's target potential customers for promotional mailings or allow the Regional Multiple Listing Service to pinpoint homes for sale.

Government clients were added with a 1997 licensing agreement with the Metropolitan Council that gives 200 counties, watershed districts and emergency response groups free access to the data.

The license fees are pretty small, "but they pay for the daily data updating we do for other clients," Charboneau said.

And that updating, which keeps track of ever-changing road, street and address changes and additions, "is a real boon to the dispatch industry," said Jim Maxwell, vice president of the Lawrence Group's electronic services.

Dick Youngblood • 612-673-4439 • yblood@startribune.com