Travel guide publisher sees a new world of growth.

New version of Fielding's guide finds niche with buyers

After snapping up the Fielding's travel book series a year ago from William Morrow & Co., ad man-turned-publisher Robert Young Pelton is now on an acquisition quest. He is negotiating to add several new books to his line and may take on a new strategic partner to fund his expansion.

Redondo Beach-based Fielding Worldwide Inc. has reintroduced the four-decade-old Fielding series in the last four weeks and has received favorable reviews from book store buyers who like the way Pelton has redesigned and edited the books. "Fielding's Caribbean '94" has been especially strong and has sold out at several stores in L.A.

Pelton, 38, made his reputation with Pelton & Associates Inc., a design and advertising firm, in the 1980s. The company hit it big when it designed and marketed Upper Deck's baseball cards. Pelton continues to work in this arena and does consulting and design work for Topps baseball cards.

He acquired Fielding using his own money ("it was like bungee jumping without a rope"), then found a partner in mid-1993 in Outlook Graphics Corp., a Wisconsin-based packaging and printing company that now has a 20 percent stake in Fielding. Pelton uses Outlook's 800,000-square-foot facility in Neenah, Wis., as a distribution, storage and shipping location.

To finance his expansion, Pelton is now in the early stages of negotiating with a major telecommunications company for a majority stake in Fielding. He said he expects that company to help him to transmit his travel book material to the public electronically while also providing capital for acquisitions and starting new books.

If the merger is consummated, Pelton said, the new owners would expect him to build Fielding into a $50 million publisher over the next four years.

Pelton said he is negotiating to buy a travel series that includes more than 50 titles but didn't name the publisher because the negotiations are in a "delicate stage." He is also discussing creating a new travel series with Richard Saul Worman, the author/publisher who created the successful Access guide series.

Pelton wants to offer a wide range of travel books that cover adventure in third world type trips ("in your face travel") to softer first class travel to obvious vacations. However, Pelton stresses the books will focus on the travel experience not the minutae of hotels/shops/restaurants.

On a trip to Kenya this winter, Pelton found a guide book to safari lodges written by American ex-patriots and quickly made a deal for the U.S. rights and will be included in the Fielding series.

Fielding was started in the 1950s by Brit Temple Fielding and was aimed at affluent European travelers. With the onslaught of new titles in the 1970s, Fielding lost market share and after the founder died in 1983 the series quickly lost shelf space in the nation's bookstores. By the 1990s, Fielding was not among the top titles in the industry.

Pelton inherited 23 guides, of which about half were marginally profitable and the others were dust collecting losers. Originally, Morrow had hoped to sell the series for between $5 million and $7 million, but Pelton got it for far less.

To infuse new life into the series, Pelton said, he will start expanding the Fielding imprimatur, making it much more adventurous to reflect his own risk-taking travel style. Pelton's recent exploits include a 1,000-mile jeep trip through Burundi and he has been to Borneo four times in the last five years. His Borneo sojourns included floating a river that has been closed since the late 1960s and surviving a plane crash in the rainforest.

These misadventures come to light in a new Fielding book that Pelton has penned called, "The World's Most Dangerous Places." The book, scheduled to be published in 1995, will be a guide for hard-core travelers and journalists who travel to war zones such as Bosnia, Angola, Chad, Haiti and the Sudan. Los Angeles is included in the book as one of the world's lethal destinations.

Travel book stores in L.A. were shipped the 1994 Fielding series in late February and have done solid business with the new look graphics and icon-laced books.

"It was a real surprise to get the new books," said Harriet Bay, co-owner of Traveler's Bookcase in West Hollywood. "They were better organized and user friendly. Before, we only carried Mexico and the Caribbean but now we will order the entire series. We are already out of stock on the Caribbean book after two weeks."

Pelton said he hopes to be able to rebuild the Fielding franchise and then leverage that credibility with electronic information services. He recently started testing a fax travel service that will offer travelers updated information on material in his books.