Brio owners edit concept to write a success story

When William Reynolds and John Marino started Brio, a company they describe as a "virtual printing business," they fell into a trap common to many ambitious entrepreneurs bent on rapid growth.

"We were tracking down pretty much any sale we could find," said Marino, 33. "If it could be printed, we did it -- business cards, envelopes, catalogs, posters, magazines and a handful of books."

And, said Reynolds, 43, "We weren't very competitive in many categories. There was a lot of competition and tight margins in most of them."

Translation: The Minneapolis company, which advertised for printing clients online and then found a printer to match their needs, was breaking even, at best.

Whereupon the Brio founders narrowed their focus late in 2006 to contract book publishing, a small element of the business, but one with fewer competitors and much wider margins.

The payoff: While 2008 revenue only matched the 2007 total of $1.8 million, the gross margin doubled because 95 percent of 2008 revenue came from book-publishing, against just a third of the 2007 total.

"If we hadn't changed the business model when we did, we wouldn't be here today," Marino said. And considering the impact of the recession on the conventional printing business, "the timing wasn't bad, either," Reynolds said.

In short, its clientele is largely promising authors who cannot find a conventional publisher or who wish to retain ownership and control of their work.

The company started in 2003. Reynolds, the son of a printer who ran an online printing brokerage, brought the idea for Brio to his friend Marino, who was managing a south Minneapolis restaurant.

The concept seemed promising: a full-blown printing business minus the expensive equipment. They would lure the printing clients online, do a bit of prep work and ship the files to the requisite printing firm.

But intense competition and lack of focus took a toll: "We were doing 150 projects a month and working our tails off and not making any money" Reynolds said.

The shift into book publishing had its own limitations at first because Marino and Reynolds started out offering only printing services. That meant they relied on clients who'd already had the editing, design and layout work done.

All of which does not guarantee widespread national distribution, never mind that there have been authors "who came in talking about how they want Tom Cruise to play the lead in the movie based on their book," Reynolds said. So he sees part of his job as imposing a dose of reality on a delusional client.

"We try to get their eyes wide open" to make them understand that "there's no guarantee that bookstores will even accept their books," he said. If national distribution is not in the cards, Brio's PR service can arrange local and regional book signings, media contacts, trade journal articles and press releases to help push sales.

"The point is, not everyone uses all the services," Reynolds said. "They can pick and choose what they need and can afford." The average client spends between $5,000 and $10,000, although the cost can top $25,000 for all the services, depending on the number of copies required.

The company published 280 titles in 2008, ranging from children's and religious offerings to cookbooks and business tomes. You would not recognize the names of most of the authors, although there might be exceptions for followers of some cable TV reality shows.

Example: Brio published the "Cafe Firenze Cookbook" by Fabio Viviani, executive chef at Cafe Firenze in Moorpark, Calif., who was voted the "Fan Favorite" last season on Bravo TV's "Top Chef: New York" reality series. The book has been accepted by both Borders and Barnes and Noble.

But it didn't come easily, Marino said: "It took time to get it right; to find the right keywords and determine the optimum times of day and days of the week" to run the online promotions. In the end, however, it appears to be paying off.

"We're a Google success story," Marino said.