In a letter to its established Ingram Publisher Services clients and the more than 600 new distribution clients joining the company after the March 31 purchase of Perseus Books Group's distribution business, Ingram Content Group outlined how it will structure its much larger distribution operations and emphasized that after buying "one of the best companies in distribution... our role during this integration is to make sure that all of our clients continue to receive the very best sales and distribution support for their books."
With the aim of taking "advantage of the scale of Ingram while making sure that our clients continue to get the service they expect from the distribution companies," Ingram plans to continue with "separate distribution brands serving publishers with diverse businesses and needs." The various parts of Perseus's distribution business consist of Publishers Group West, Consortium Book Distribution, Perseus Distribution, Legato and Constellation.
"Our intent with the 'brand structure' is to retain as much client management, sales force leadership and marketing as possible within individual business units," the letter continued. "We'll also have a 'shared services' sales force that will handle markets that are tough to handle through national and other major accounts."
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| Phil Ollila | |
Under the new structure, Ingram chief content officer Phil Ollila, who reports to Ingram president and CEO Shawn Morin, will be in charge of the distribution business. (The founder of IPS, Ollila also oversees Lightning Source, CoreSource, wholesale buying and marketing for Ingram.)
Mark Ouimet, who has directly led IPS (and earlier worked at PGW), will run IPS Full Service, PGW, Consortium and Legato. Sabrina McCarthy, who has run Perseus distribution services and sales, will oversee current Perseus Distribution business and a few other units, including Ingram's 'logistics only' clients, with Carter Holliday reporting to her.
Sean Shoemaker will lead PGW, Julie Schaper will lead Consortium, Jeff Tegge will manage Legato (and now report to Sean Shoemaker) and Margery Buchanan will manage the client relationships with the IPS full service team. Within this group, Kim Wylie is going to lead sales strategy and national accounts for IPS, PGW and Legato, and Julia Cowlishaw (IPS) and Mark Hillesheim (Legato) will report to Wylie. The Consortium national accounts sales leadership and structure remains the same, reporting to Jim Nichols.
Heidi Sachner will continue to lead the Perseus Distribution clients and report to McCarthy. A stand-alone national accounts group consisting of both current and new reps will support Perseus Distribution clients.
Matty Goldberg will lead IPS's acquisition strategies and help Ouimet, McCarthy and Ollila with strategic client relationships and development. Gonzalo Ferreyra and Caitlin Churchill will now report to Goldberg.
On the international side, Meredith Greenhouse now reports to McCarthy and will grow IPS's distribution footprint. Canada is now part of the international sales group, and Keith Arsenault will report to Greenhouse.
Major accounts coverage will continue to be served through Perseus Distribution, PGW, IPS, Consortium and Legato, with most of the same salespeople with the same roles. "Field Sales (Perseus Distribution, PGW and Legato), Gift and Specialty and Mass accounts are a different story," Ingram continued. "With so many accounts spread across such a large geography, our thinking is that we will have these accounts report up to a 'shared services' sales group" that will be led by Jeanne Emanuel, who will report to chief commercial officer Shawn Everson, who has led the retail, export, library and periodicals business for Ingram.
Elise Cannon will lead field sales for indie stores, and Mary Faria will lead the mass segments. Emanuel will also continue to lead the gift and specialty group. Sandy Hernandez and Judy Witt will both report to Emanuel, and her team is taking on Ingram's gift, specialty and mass group, too. Cannon's team will continue to support indie sales for the distribution brands with the exception of Consortium and Ingram Publisher Services, and they won't sell Ingram wholesale.
Ingram expects over time to adjust territories to improve coverage of many indie customers so that reps have less travel time and more selling time, approaches that will extend to Ingram reps. Consortium's commission sales team continues to represent Consortium clients as part of Jim Nichols's team.