MUSIC MAKER BANKER HOPES TO TURN DISTRIBUTION FIRM INTO AN OUTLET FOR NEW TALENT.

Byline: Staff Writer

SIMI VALLEY _ African-Americans' contributions to music this century are legendary but until recently they played little role in getting that music into stores.

Pacific Coast One-Stop in Simi Valley, already the nation's third-largest distributor of CDs, cassettes and DVDs, became one of the biggest African-American-owned businesses in the region when it was bought in December by Sacramento investment banker Ralph W. Johnson.

The jazz-loving Johnson, who played sax at high school dances in his native Bakersfield, had no ties to the music industry when he and partner Marvin Wilcher considered acquiring Pacific Coast at a time that free music sources like Napster were threatening to dry up revenue.

Beyond seeing the Internet as an opportunity to expand the business, they seized on the business and altruistic benefits of helping unknown, particularly urban artists get their music into stores.

``Nothing would bring me more joy than to assist in identifying some local talent, get them a record deal and distribute their music,'' said Johnson, 51, whose offices off Easy Street are lined with platinum records and paintings of Muddy Waters and Charlie Parker.

To that end, they have established the Smooth Voyage record label under Hank Caldwell, formerly of Death Row Records.

Pacific Coast One-Stop ships about 1 million CDs and other units each month from its 60,000-square-foot warehouse where about 200 employees use a computer-driven bar code inventory and conveyor system to send packages to 2,500 retailers, most of them small record shops.

The company, which is about 30 years old, does about $100 million in business each year, putting it behind Alliance Entertainment Corp. of Coral Springs, Fla., and the industry's leader, Valley Media Inc., of Woodland, Calif., which has deals with big chains like Best Buy and Wherehouse as well as major Internet retailers like Amazon.com.

Pacific Coast also serves Internet retailers and, under the technical direction of Johnson, who also owns a Boston plant that makes circuit boards, is using the Internet to help small record stores manage and purchase inventory.

``In this first stage of the Internet revolution a one-stop is more necessary than ever,'' said Wilcher, a mergers and acquisition specialist who worked out the deal and serves as chief operating officer. ``You have to one-stop where all the products are at to fulfill all those orders overnight.''

The new owner's first move was to install a hand-picked management team. Johnson, who did not disclose how much he paid for the company, and Wilcher also relocated to the Los Angeles area to grow the business.

They join a minority-owned business community that, according to a recent study by Merrill Lynch and the nonprofit Community Development Technologies Center, contribute significantly to the region's growth.

By being a nationwide business, Pacific Coast is already avoiding one of the pitfalls that hampers many minority businesses, said CDTech President Denise Fairchild.

``For the most part these businesses have been locked into their ethnic or local geographic market and that's really hampered their ability to grow,'' Fairchild said.

Bringing smaller or overlooked artists to smaller or speciality retailers makes good business sense, said Jack Kyser of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation.

``It presents more choice to the consumers,'' Kyser said. ``You have all these national chains where everything gets pretty homogenized so there will always be a place for small stores serving niches in the market because they offer unusual options.''

As a financial adviser to the United Pastors Association, Johnson said he realized there were hundreds of gospel groups that record and sell their music at their home parish and could benefit by wider distribution.

``There's a lot of individuals that start their business and feel that there's a certain sector in the minority community that are being left out,'' said Rudy Guerra with the Los Angeles office of the Minority Business Development Agency, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Johnson wants to make the most of having the largest African-American-owned distribution business in the country.

``If you look at the history of Motown or Mercury records, minorities make a significant contribution to the entertainment industry but controlled no percentage of the distribution,'' said Johnson, a one-time student at University of California, Los Angeles, who worked at Prudential Securities in Sacramento for the past 12 years.

``We believe that because of our heritage and the mom-and-pop record stores we deal with, we will better be able to serve those communities by providing products from artists that come right from the urban community.''

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2 photos

Photo: (1 -- color) Banker Ralph W. Johnson, the new owner of Pacific Coast One-Stop in Simi Valley, wants to help urban artists get their music into stores.

(2 -- color) An office window at Pacific Coast One-Stop, one of the nation's biggest CD distributors, is decorated with posters.

John Kennedy/Special to the Daily News