A leading US print and online publisher of children's non-fiction books and reference materials. Grolier Educational publishes on these subjects: Reference and Children's in these languages: English.
Feature available to premium subscribers only. PubMail gets delivered to the on-line mailbox of the profile. Corporate: For premium subscribers only Editorial: For premium subscribers only Submissions: For premium subscribers only Rights: For premium subscribers only Permissions: For premium subscribers only Sales: For premium subscribers only. It remains to be seen whether that strategy, applied to a venerable upper-level even adult-level publication, will work in the long run.
The name Grolier is retained as the Scholastic website Grolier Online. The company exists as Grolier Incorporated. Rugrats Wiki Explore. Original series All Grown Up! Requests for adminship Requests for bureaucrat Requests for content moderator Requests for rollback. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? In a complaint filed with the U. Federal Trade Commission FTC accused Grolier of fraudulent and deceptive practices in door-to-door and other sales techniques, recruitment of personnel, and debt collection.
Encyclopedia Britannica and about 30 other companies were found to have engaged in similar practices. In an administrative law judge upheld the major provisions of the Grolier FTC complaint. Grolier appealed the decision to the FTC's five-member commission, which one year later unanimously sustained the decision. Grolier was ordered, therefore, to cease and desist all deceptive practices, and to ensure that the company's sales force properly represent the company's products. At the same time that Grolier faced financial difficulties, its two major competitors for the encyclopedia market, Field Enterprises Educational Corporation and Encyclopedia Britannica, were experiencing substantial growth.
The profitability of both companies resulted primarily from expansion into the same overseas markets that Grolier found unmanageable. While Grolier lost money in these markets, Encyclopedia Britannica alone had expanded into countries, finding the foreign business enormously profitable. In under duress from creditors, the company's board of directors demanded a change in management. Disagreement between members of the board and inside management some had inherited substantial stock in the company resulted in the selection of Robert B.
Clarke to salvage the firm. Clarke was a longtime company insider who joined Grolier in as a shipping clerk. He rose through middle management before taking charge in of Grolier Enterprises, the company's profitable mail-order business. Three years after becoming division president, for tax reasons, he relocated operations to Danbury, Connecticut, from the company's New York headquarters on Lexington Avenue.
Clarke had a reputation for financial discipline, and at the time of his selection, he was working on evaluating the profitability of Grolier's various businesses. Upon becoming company president on October 23, , Clarke moved quickly to reorganize the company and keep creditors at bay. He relocated the corporate headquarters to Connecticut, where the local corporate court would be more sympathetic to Grolier's financial plight than the courts in New York.
To restore the company's finances, he pulled out of losing ventures, cut staff, and hastily implemented cost- and cash-flow controls. He hired the investment firm Goldman Sachs to evaluate the company's financial viability. He also hired Harvey Miller, a bankruptcy expert of Weil, Gotshal to examine the bankruptcy angle.
Clarke's concern was how bankruptcy would affect company relations with suppliers and manufacturers, and whether it would ruin Grolier's credit supply. Clarke was also worried that Grolier's subsidiary businesses would have to follow the parent company into bankruptcy. He knew that if Grolier declared bankruptcy, creditors would petition the courts for the liquidation of all assets, including the subsidiary businesses. Nevertheless, if one of Grolier's subsidiaries could pay creditors more than they would otherwise receive through wholesale liquidation, the courts would likely protect the business.
As a result, Grolier crafted a strategy of avoiding bankruptcy by using its most profitable subsidiary, the mail-order division, to carry the entire company and pay off creditors. The subsidiary placed all of Grolier's purchase and manufacturing orders, and paid suppliers and creditors from its own money. Nevertheless, Grolier's position was precarious at best.
If creditors either severed its credit line or tightened the terms, the company would be put out of business. To avoid this scenario, the company courted its creditors, assuring them of payment and managing to assuage the concerns of 23 lending institutions to which Grolier owed substantial sums. At the same time Clarke maintained the support of Grolier's board of directors and launched other strategies to return the company to profitability.
In he negotiated a restructuring agreement with the banks to give Grolier time to reorganize and set out to expand the company's market for encyclopedias. Despite criticism that the market lacked growth opportunity, Grolier nevertheless increased its door-to-door encyclopedia sales. In Clarke pursued telephone sales, a strategy that proved more profitable than traditional door-to-door sales. Grolier began its telemarketing campaign by renting space in downtown Danbury, Connecticut, and hiring six women to make telephone calls.
The company also developed a computer databank including the names of millions of individuals who either owed Grolier money or were buying one of its products.
By expanding its market, increasing sales, and finally earning profits, Grolier managed to offset its debt payments. The campaign advertised the popular children's encyclopedia the New Book of Knowledge to the consumer using three direct-mail packages targeting 1. At the same time Grolier tried to enhance the marketability of the volume set by reducing its price by 39 percent. The Book of Knowledge was first published in and then completely revised in In an interview, Grolier president and Chief Executive Officer, Robert Clarke, stated that the advertising program amounted to the largest marketing campaign ever for a multivolume set in the mail-order publishing field.
The campaign stemmed from marketing analysis showing declining encyclopedia sales due to consumer discontent over high prices, dislike of door-to-door salespeople, and parental uncertainty of whether their children would make use of the reference books.
Despite Clarke's aggressive capital restructuring program, by the company continued to have difficulties. Although free of the banks and the Swiss, Grolier's load of public debt amounted to over half its total capital.
Nevertheless, in the company formed a successful new subsidiary, Grolier Electronic Publishing, which in introduced the first encyclopedia in electronic format on compact-disc read-only memory CD-ROM under the name Academic American Encyclopedia. The company also introduced the product on laser videodisc.
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