October 03. Mail Tribune.By Greg Stiles. Morgan and Chase Publishing, which produced coffee table travel guidebooks, has closed. The four-year-old west Medford publishing company had its 6,000-square-foot production plant on Parsons Drive and had as many as 40 employees and private contractors. "We sold to small business, they were hurting and we were hurting, " said President Damon Neal. "We've become insolvent."
The company opened amid burgeoning economic times when rapidly escalating home values and relatively inexpensive gas prices allowed Americans to travel widely. Some 30 titles were published about communities from California to Ontario, Canada. But after a two-year growth cycle, the tide turned. "The small businesses we dealt with were mainly in the hospitality industry, restaurants and attractions, " Neal said. "They were all struggling and still are. Their business is down 30,40, 50 percent. They are desperately hanging on and didn't have money to spend on anything else. We heard that over and over.
In the middle of Morgan and Chase saw trouble on the horizon and by January the decline was rapid. "It was getting pretty serious, " Neal said. "We tried other methods of marketing, but we kept running into problems. The final nail was gas. When gas prices began to skyrocket, people were putting their money in the tank and weren't going out to eat and doing the kinds of things we were writing about. Neal said the company's board went to an attorney to review financial statements as it searched for a way to pull back from the brink. "The short answer was that we had no reorganization plan and tremendous overhead, " Neal said. "We had already cut costs as close as we could and there was no way to get from under it." Employees were laid off two weeks ago. Reach reporter Greg Stiles at 541-776-4463 or e-mail [email protected].
0 comments