Today we meet Paul Kolars, a partner, along with along with Linda Klemstein and Keely Vazquez in St. Paul, MN-based Trimax Direct. Trimax has been in business since 2000.
The trio broke away from magazine publisher VNU Business Media (now known as Nielsen Business Media) in Minneapolis. VNU had been on a buying spree for a few years, and had decided to close operations locally and move everything back east to New York.
At VNU, the three had been involved in such direct marketing activities as direct mail, e-mail and telemarketing with Kolars serving as in-house manager of the firm’s 1.5 million-name database, a role he had held for a number of years.
“At that point we said ‘well if we were going to start our own company this would probably be a good time to do it,’” Kolars says.
Trimax brokers and manages business magazine publishing lists as its mainstay. But the company has also expanded into such areas as software companies as well as human resources, training and educational companies, he says.
Similar to some other list brokers, Kolars sees the list broker’s role as having expanded from its original job description.
“For our clients we try to be an outsourced marketing department because a lot of times marketing departments have been decimated by the economy and they’ve suffered layoffs,” he says.
Those additional services can include such things as customized research, customized newsletters and e-mail; campaigns as well as fulfillment and customized telemarketing.
Probably the main reason for this is that conventional list brokerage has dried up to an extent.
“Some traditional list brokers are having a really hard time making it because their clients just aren’t doing as much,” he says, noting that a further industry shake-up may be possible.
Nevertheless:
“I’ve been a list broker and dealing with list brokers for almost 30 years and we’re a very resilient group of people and very smart and very intelligent about how to stay in business and we just have to look for new ways to make money,” he says.
When away from work, Kolars lives in his home in Western Wisconsin with his wife and four children who range in age from four to 15. He raises Scottish highland cattle and horses.
