Bob Brady keeps his eye on growth despite challenges on many fronts.

"The major influence leading me to my publishing career," said Robert L. Brady, president of Business & Legal Reports Inc., "was my experience as editor of my college newspaper, The Notre Dame Observer. I worked on the paper because my friends were doing it, but it was an incredible learning experience (not to mention the major reason it took me seven years to finish college)."

A bit later Bob founded BLR during his final year of law school at the University of Connecticut. Prior to that he had worked for both the Bureau of Business Practice and Institute for Management, both newsletter publishers, where "I was fortunate enough to be exposed to all three of the major 'legs' of the publishing 'stool'--editorial, marketing, and operations."

Since its founding in 1977 as a newsletter company specializing in the area of employment law, BLR has evolved into a multi-media provider of information about occupational safety and health, human resources management, and environmental management.

"We focus on compliance and training information," Brady said, "and are known for products that explain the interrelationship of state and federal law. Most of our products are sold via direct response, direct mail or telephone, on an annual subscription basis."

250 titles

BLR currently publishes about 250 different titles (with a staff of 170, excluding telemarketers), including the following newsletters:

* Environmental Compliance in (Your State), 12x/$595/year

* OSHA Compliance Advisor (24x, $299.95/year)

* What to Do About Personnel Problems in (Your State), 12x, $295/year

* Employee Compensation, 12x, $395/year.

Today, Brady noted, "Only about 10 of our products are 'traditional newsletters.' We seek subscription-based revenues in a wide variety of formats. We have a line of employee training pamphlets and a series of training products that assist the trainer by providing reproducible handbooks, Power Point files, and other low-tech training aids.

"In the last five years we have concentrated on the development of subscription websites that combine all of our content for specific subject areas (e.g., safety, human resources, environment) into 'category killer' websites. In all cases, they take our core content and reposition it for the web, layering application on top of content.

"Despite our company name, our principal market is business managers, not lawyers. Our customers are the managers charged with responsibility of keeping their companies in compliance with federal and state law while managing efficiently. Our typical customer comes from a medium-sized company, i.e., those with between 100 and 2,000 employees," Brady said.

Sources of BLR's growth

"We have succeeded in growing larger than all but a few of our peers in the newsletter industry," Brady continued. "The reasons are many, but an important factor has been our willingness to expand into multiple subject areas and to develop and deliver products in multiple media.

"A core part of our strategy has been to develop newsletters, loose-leafs, training manuals and training aids in our areas of expertise. This has allowed us to maximize the use of our most important asset, our customer data base. Our strategy has always been to 'sell more product to the same customer.'"

Brady cited the following as the critical factors in the company's growth:

* Expansion into safety and environment,

* The introduction of the state-specific services,

* The successful introduction of telemarketing as a sales channel, and

* The development of the websites.

"Since 2001 growth has been much more difficult to achieve, due to multiple factors including: increased competition, decreased regulatory activity, the economic downturn, and structural changes in the information industry.

"We grew top line in 2004 for the first time in several years, but we remain quite profitable despite heavy investment in the infrastructure necessary for the development of e-commerce products."

Marketing

While revenue coming from the websites is growing, the overwhelming majority of BLR's marketing is done via direct mail and telemarketing. In DM they use a variety of formats, including a four-color catalog, self-mailers, and #10 packages. "I have to say," Brady commented, "that the proportion of revenues generated by mail is much less than it once was.

"We telemarket in every possible way. We have an in-house staff and we acquired a telemarketing company in Pennsylvania with 50 stations. In addition, we also use a number of outside vendors. We offer every product we have in telemarketing with different degrees of success. We're happy when we sell anything, but there are products that simply can't be profitably sold on the phone," Brady said.

After more than a quarter of a century in business, Business & Legal Reports is now owned by Bob Brady as founder-president, his brother John F. Brady as executive vice president, and two trusts for the benefit of their children.

BLR, 141 Mill Rock Road East, Box 6001, Old Saybrook, CT 06475, 860-510-0100, fax [phone], www.blr.com