Palm Coast About a Year Away from Completing Kable Integration

Some title attrition, but a result of economy, not merger, says PCD president.

By Bill Mickey
Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Last October, Palm Coast Data announced it was beginning the process of fully integrating Kable Fulfillment Services into the Palm Coast brand and moving operations down to Palm Coast, Florida. PCD president John Meneough says the majority of the phased integration will be complete by 2010.

Most recently, PCD announced it exercised its option to purchase the facility it was leasing from the city of Palm Coast. The building was set up as a "landing zone" for the employees and front-end services being moved from the Colorado and Illinois locations.

Original plans called for building a new facility in a few years. "We had the city put the building into play for us so we'd have a landing zone when we brought things down," says Meneough. "Once we got into it we realized that the building was a great fit for us without having to design and build a new one."

Since the integration began last fall, Meneough says one phase is now complete. Several others are still ongoing. "When we merged together we had three fulfillment systems," says Meneough. "We got out of the EDS system right away. That's 100 percent done, all of the titles are completely converted to the Florida system."

Two telephone customer service facilities have been consolidated into Florida as well—Nova Scotia and Illinois. Integrating front-end processing, which was the key point of leasing the new building from the city of Palm Coast, is about 50 percent completed, with personnel and operations moving down to Florida from Ohio, Colorado and Illinois.

Meneough says about 50 percent of lettershop services are already being done in Florida and the rest, moving from Colorado, will be complete by first quarter 2010.

Upwards of 900 employees from the Colorado and Illinois facilities were said to be impacted by the merger. PCD was unable to say how many made the move to Florida by presstime. [Ed.—Check back for an update on this.]

Meneough also says there is still work to be done transitioning titles off Kable's K-Data system. About 50 percent of the titles and 70 percent of total circ have been completed, he says. The rest should be done by late 2010.

When PCD announced the Florida integration last fall, there was speculation that in the face of another fulfillment conversion, a significant number of PCD's publisher clients would reevaluate their options, and potentially leave for another bureau. Meneough attributes any attrition to economic forces rather than service-oriented. "We want to keep all of our business, but the economy is changing that. It's rougher on the smaller guys. We've lost titles, we're no different than anybody else. You're going to see [publishers] consolidating, rate bases drop. It's just a sign of the times."

Meneough says PCD currently has about 700 titles, including membership titles.

Palm Coast Data May Be on Verge of Consolidating Kable Operations to Florida