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Best Book’ gets better – More offers, other cities in the plans
The Commercial Appeal
By David Flaum

The Best Book in Town has a new look this year: It’s thicker, with offers from different types of restaurants and entertainment spots.

Dan Petchers recently bought majority ownership in the popular coupon book, which cheerleaders, church members, scouts and others sell to raise money.

And he doesn’t plan to stop with just coupons or at Memphis borders.

Petchers, who has spent most of his professional life in marketing, plans to add other fund-raising products – chocolate bars are already available – and license books all over the ’country.

“I felt I could bring some of my marketing and sales ability into the equation and bring it to a new level,” said Petchers, 61, who came to Memphis in 1992 as director of marketing for the Yardley division of Maybelline.

When L’Oreal bought the company and moved the headquarters to New York in 1994, Petchers decided to stay in Memphis.

He started a franchise of a youth sports photography firm in early 1995 and sold it six years later.

Petchers began looking for another business – one that was well-established and that played to his strengths – and connected with The Best Book.

He spent six months as a volunteer, learning the business, then bought two-thirds’ interest in the company in April 2003. The owner of the other piece, Stan Rojeski, who started The Best Book in 1980, helps re-sign advertisers.

Petchers found the new business overlapped with his old one – nonprofit groups like schools and churches and their sports teams that he signed on to photograph.

He figured those organizations could sell The Best Book to raise money.

The Best Book rolled out its 2004-5 edition a month ago with 150 groups signed up to sell the books for $10 each.

Therein lies a growth opportunity – the area has about 2,500 nonprofit groups and agencies in all, Petchers said.

To reach people who aren’t approached by members of such groups, Petchers signed up about 80 businesses to sell the books on 40 percent commission for $12 each – the higher price to protect fund-raisers, he said.

Fund-raisers keep $5 of that and get 10 free books for every 100 sold.

“They just sell themselves,” said Eloise Maddox of Ellison Baptist Church.

She was in Petchers’s office this week to pay for the 100 books the church took July 13 and had sold by Monday.

The books are easier to sell than T-shirts the church has sold in the past for $18 each, especially with Memphis City Schools students wearing uniforms, she said.

Mt. Pisgah Middle School cheerleaders started selling their books this week as part of their effort to raise money to return to Orlando in February to defend their national title, said Cheri Hansen, who is in charge of the fund-raiser.

Each of the 25 squad members, including her eighth-grade daughter, Chanler, 14, starts with 10 books, she said.

“There’s no overhead. If we don’t sell the books, we can return them in good condition,” Hansen said. “We can go back for more if we need them.”

The books sell well because they pay for themselves, she said.

“You get your money back on one coupon.”

Businesses benefit, too.

“It’s a good way to introduce ourselves to Memphis,” said Dotty Burana, owner of the two-year old Bangkok Alley, a Thai restaurant in Cordova.

Diners from Mondays to Thursdays may get a free entree worth as much as $18.95 with a coupon if they buy one priced at least that high.

“I’m not really a big coupon person because we’re a small restaurant (57 seats),” Burana said.

But she can track results more easily from coupons than other promotions – two regular customers have used them so far – and the offer may draw in people who might be interested in sampling the cuisine, she said.

Petchers hopes to license the books in other cities. He planned to start next year, but made a licensing agreement this year with someone in Greenville, S.C., who approached him.

The Best Book’s main competition, Entertainment Book, is published by a national firm. The book, about the size of a hardback novel, costs $20, but includes more types of offers than The Best Book, many of them from national companies such as hotels and car rental firms.

A spokesman for Entertainment Book did not return phone calls.

Price and the emphasis on local businesses make The Best Book competitive, Petchers said.

Petchers is starting to offer other products.

The first is Divine Chocolate, 3 1/2-ounce milk chocolate and dark chocolate bars, made from cocoa produced by a farmer-owned cooperative in Ghana. The Fair Trade Certified bars sell for $3 each, with half going to the fund-raising group.

“I’m on the lookout for (additional) products that are unique,” Petchers said. “I really want to offer products that have a socially redeeming value to them.”

- David Flaum: 529-2330

Thomas: Chocolate seller with a mission is a Live 1
The Commercial Appeal
By Wendi C. Thomas

What Saturday’s Live 8 concerts drew attention to, what this week’s G8 summit in Scotland hopes to achieve, Memphis businessman Dan Petchers is already doing, albeit on a smaller scale.

Both the concerts and the gathering of the world’s richest eight nations want to erase poverty in Africa. To do so, fair trade systems must be created, Live 8 organizers and G8 leaders agree.

Fair trade means that farmers and artisans in developing nations receive a price for their products that allows them to make a living and send their children to school, instead of to work in the fields.

This is where Petchers, who owns Best Fundraisers, comes in. For the past two years, he’s offered the fair trade candy bar Divine Chocolate to local groups as a fund-raiser.

The fund-raising groups keep 50 percent of the bar’s $2 price. A good portion of the rest goes back to the Kuapa Kokoo co-op of Ghanaian farmers who grow the cocoa beans that make the chocolate; they also own part of the company.

Fair trade standards, he says, mean that for the first time, these farmers can afford to taste the chocolate they help make.

Petchers learned about the fair trade movement from his son, Seth, 32, who works for Oxfam America, a nonprofit organization determined to solve the problems that cause poverty worldwide.

“At the very basic level, this is about people wanting to take care of their families, just like you,” explains Seth.

The challenge is in opening the eyes of bargain lovers who never consider how little money goes to the people who create the products we buy.

The goal of father and son is to spread the word about those products, particularly commodities like chocolate, coffee, bananas and sugar, that provide a fair wage to everyone on the supply chain.

Fair trade is “a business model and not a charity model,” Seth says. The “Fair Trade Certified” logo on a chocolate bar is no different than the Intel logo on a computer. Buyers are willing to pay for what they value, be it Intel technology, or fair trade products.

While some fair trade products do cost more than comparable ones, most are competitively priced. For example, Starbucks’ fair trade coffee sells for about $11 per pound. Their cheapest coffee is $10 per pound; the most expensive for more than $22 per pound.

It’s estimated that fair trade products are just .01 percent of the $3.6 trillion of goods exchanged globally.

According to the Fair Trade Federation, a Haitian woman who makes clothes sold in the U.S. might earn less than 1 percent of what the clothing sells for. Fair trade operations return between 25 and 33 percent of the profits back to farmers and workers in developing nations.

That difference, often measured in pennies, Seth says, often determines whether the farmer and his family survives.

It might not be justice for African farmers and their children, but whatever issue moves you to act, you’ll find in the fair trade movement.

If the fear of another 9/11 attack keeps you up at nights, know that establishing fair trade systems creates stable economies that are less likely to harbor terrorists.

If you chant “Just Say No” to drugs, remember that a coffee co-op in Colombia made sure fields were used to grow coffee beans, and not poppy plants.

Perhaps you’re staunchly for women’s rights. If so, you may be persuaded to seek out fair trade products (try Wild Oats) because you’ve learned that fair trade standards include making sure women are included in the decision-making processes.

And fair trade products are almost always grown organically, with an eye toward protecting biodiversity and sustaining the land.

With all that in mind, Dan Petchers isn’t too bothered that he’s not making much profit on Divine Chocolates.

“I have a mission here,” he says. “If you could wind the clock five years ahead, fair trade products will mean something to consumers. This is the beginning.”

For more information about fair trade, visit transfairusa.org. For information about Divine Chocolate, go to www.divinechocolate.com or contact Dan Petchers at 818-3818 or bestfundraisers.biz.

To contact Wendi C. Thomas, call (901) 529-5896 or send an e-mail.

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