1986-1987 He spent the next couple
years traveling the USA and visiting
all the
flea markets, establishing life
long relationships with all the
proprietors, selling this software
to all major flea markets as well
as flea market chains.
His
client list began to grow and
was the who’s who in the
USA Flea Market Owners and Management
scene. http://www.fleamarketguide.com
His
interest in the merchant’s
side of the business grew, as
it was this software that generated
their daily, weekly and monthly
invoices. Some of the problems
facing flea markets were their
lack of merchandise selection
so flea market managers
wanted to offer the general public
an even better merchandise
selection. So he decided to bring
even more wholesalers information
to thevendors of
each flea market. He ran across
a small magazine called The Flea
Market News http://www.wholesalenewspaper.com
out of North Carolina. “Which
was a small regional wholesale
information newspaper”.
At that point, he contacted the
owner of that newspaper and she
agreed to sell us the Florida/Southern
region Flea Market News. He had
also contacted the Clark’s
Guide http://estore.websitepros.com/stores/1144644/cataloglist.html
out of Pensacola, but Dot Clark,
the owner, would not sell her
Guide to Flea Markets book for
less than $1,000,000 and we didn’t
have the mil so the Florida/Southern
Flea Market News was born. We
loved it! Darren was in ad design,
distribution and management and
I “Jennifer” was in
sales. In order to get our new
paper off the ground, the only
thing we had was a copy of the
North Carolina edition of the
Flea Market News. Now, I needed
to sell ads for our own new publication.
Florida/Southern Flea Market News
So, I took
a road trip by myself, I drove
the whole state of Florida to
sell all the flea market owners
advertisement in of our new great
product, Florida/Southern Flea
Market News. I remember meeting
with Rick Waller of the Market
Place Flea Market in Jacksonville.
He was delighted that Darren and
I had a new publication, gladly
he said, he would advertise with
us. He asked me, “Can you
use this for my ad?” (It
was a negative film from a prior
print he had done), I replied,
“Oh Yes,” I can use
that. I got back in the car, called
Darren on the old big BellSouth
brick cellular phone and said,
“I don’t know what
Rick Waller just gave me for the
ad, but I told him I could us
it”. My first sale!!
Now, we’re
off to the races, since Darren’s
background was in flea market
software, and we had over 500
flea markets on file in U.S. Now,
we had a publication with the
opportunity of a tremendous distribution.
Nationally we had more flea markets
on file but we started small.
So we traveled to all the flea
markets in our home state Florida;
to personally hand deliver our
copies. We had the copies piled
in our van and put them in a little
red wagon, we would shout out
“Flea Market News”
as we handed a copy to each vendor.
We were very proud.
As time went
on we had expanded our distribution
into many other states and changed
the company name to Merchants
News to get away from the stigma
of flea market merchandise. Because
the higher end wholesalers would
not advertise in a flea market
magazine, and by this time we
had retailers all over the USA
with subscriptions. Plus it was
much more fitting. We worked very
hard to get our clients business.
It’s a fact that many of
the wholesalers that advertised
back then in late 1980’s
and early 1990’s, still
advertise with us today. Advertisers
like,
Accessories Palace (at that time
he was called WT Weil), http://www.accessoriespalace.com
Sunny Trading, http://www.sunico.com
Asia Pacific, http://www.aptcinc.com
International Market World, http://www.intlmarketworld.com
SRE Inc, http://www.sportsaddictinc.com
From that point
(1995-Present) we started to attend
the big trade shows like ASD/AMD
http://www.asdamdshows.com
in Las Vegas and Merchandise Groups,
http://www.merchandisegroup.com
in New York. We were really building
a name for ourselves. However,
in the beginning we did not know
we had competitors with wholesale
trade magazines. Closeout News,
Sumner Communications and Flea
Market Merchandiser. Well, Closeout
News was then out of Michigan
and focused more on surplus and
liquidation merchandise and Sumner’s
magazines were no problem, because
they were out of Connecticut and
spilt the country into three.
East Coast Merchandiser, Midwest
Merchandiser, and Western Merchandiser
plus they segmented the market
even more with another magazine
called COVER. Which stands for
Close-Out Variety Editorial Report.
Over the years they have become
an excellent source of competition
and we trade advertisements on
a monthly basis. We probably share
500+ wholesale advertisers via
the internet between WholesaleCentral.com
and WholesaleEZ.com and 100 in
print via Merchants News. But,
the Flea Market Merchandiser local
in Davie, Florida was the most
challenge and it was huge. He
personally took lots of photos
of merchandise from big wholesalers
inventory printed them in full
color and I did not, I had to
pick up my game and go to the
customers locations and shoot
the merchandise photos, “Thank
GOD for Email” Darren designed
the ads and together we put it
on the streets, and in to the
buyers hands. Well, eventually,
Flea Market Merchandiser went
out of business. This was great
news for us our magazine flourished
a we added 50 new big customers.
Mean while,
we had so many Miami Importers
and Exporters that advertised
with us. We started another magazine
or newspaper for them. It was
called, the Miami Import Export.
We distributed this through out
Miami, in all the wholesale districts,
the free trade zones, and the
International Airport. We had
readers from all over the world,
Brazil, Venezuela and the Caribbean.
Eventually 1996, a new Mayor of
Miami was elected Alex Pinellas.
He came in and in late 1998 he
did not appreciate our newsstands
on the streets and wanted to tax
us as much as $100,000 dollars
per year for Miami distribution.
After a tough “Freedom of
Speech and the Right to Distribute
Handbills” fight through
mid 1999 we simply pulled our
boxes of the streets of Miami,
combined Miami Import Export into
Merchants News http:///www.merchantsnews.com
and went big time nationally.
By this time it was the end 1999
and the start of Y2K, the Internet
was popping about the everywhere
you turned so we jumped right
in and started www.merchantsnews.com.
After many revisions along the
way to
www.merchantsnews.com, we
decided to change the name to
www.WholesaleEZ.com
so it would be more friendly to
Inkotomi and Googlbot and it worked.
PR4 Ranking
Today, we have
a new and improved version 8.0
of WholesaleEZ, which reaches
over one hundred thousand retailers
every month. We hope you can find
what you are looking for and enjoy
what we have to offer in print
and online. We are coming up on
out 20th year in business and
are now celebrating over 1000+
wholesalers as advertisers and
a national readership of Merchants
News of over 30,000 retailers.
Thank
You for Visiting.
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