Today we meet Dave Power, owner of Power Lists & Data, which has been in business since 2004. He's been in the list business since 1985, working at such companies as Knowledgebase Marketing, American List Counsel and the former Antigone Associates.
His brokerage specialties include insurance, healthcare and financial services.
Despite all the doom and gloom one keeps hearing about the economy, he says his clients are continuing to mail.
"My clients are still mailing big," he says. "Everybody's scared off by what they hear in the news and credit has supposedly been frozen. But I'm not sure what's true and what's not, quite frankly."
Still, he acknowledges this may not be true for everybody.
"I know that there are some brokers who have consumer catalogers and they're cutting back," Power says. "Mine are not, thank God…at least for now."
During his nearly 25 years in the industry, Power has seen a change or two, including a broadening of the list broker's role.
"We've become more marketing consultants than just list brokers," he says. "Besides just providing lists we provide other services like profiling, modeling, analytical services and referring clients to printers and telemarketing shops, things like that.
Part of this may be due to industry consolidation.
"It seems like there are fewer people on the client side and they wear a lot of hats so it evolved into the list broker having to wear a lot of hats as well," he says.
Another change is automation, which has forced everyone to speed up their processes.
"I don't think I have one list order that's not sent electronically any more so everybody expects to be serviced a lot quicker than in the past," he says.
Back then, he recalls, "it seems you had days to finish things and now it's like 'I need things tomorrow.'"
Again, consolidation plays a role.
"I think that the clients have a lot of pressure because you might be dealing with one person where it used to be three," Power says.
Power lives in North Wales, PA with his wife and three children and admits he has time for little else.
"Being a father and husband and running my own business, those are my hobbies," he says.
