March 6, 2005

In the high-stakes game for yellow page advertising dollars, a small Orem community directory publisher has found a niche providing low-cost advertising to home-based and small businesses in Colorado.

Instead of competing head-on with regional yellow pages publishers such as Dex, Yellow Book or Verizon, Sunrise Publishing Group Inc. doing business as Rocky Mountain Community Directories focused on producing directories for suburban communities in Colorado -- a move that produced more than $1 million in advertising sales for the company in its first year of business in 2004.

"There's too much competition for directory advertising dollars in Utah, and there's a saturation of local community directories in Utah. That's why we're publishing in Colorado," said Rob Crawley, a co-founder of Rocky Mountain. "Typically, advertising with a large phone directory publisher is more expensive. Their pricing is restrictive to small businesses. We offer a more affordable alternative that is just as effective."

Crawley, who said Rocky Mountain was named Best One Year Company by the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum last year, improved on the ideas of its competitors.

"Where our competitors charge extra for full color, we do not. We use higher-quality color and paper, focus on having a coupon and menu guide in the book and devote a lot of local community information, such as Chamber of Commerce calendar activities, local maps and schedules for sports teams," that regional telephone directories do not provide typically, Crawley said.

The directories also include reverse listings that allow users to determine who called from an unfamiliar number on their caller ID. The cover of each community directory features a painting from a local artist in that area.

Rocky Mountain, which started with publishing eight directories in 2004, is expected to publish 13 this year in Colorado. Founded originally as Sunrise Publishing, an online business listings and Web services directory four years ago, the company made the transition to print advertising in early 2003 in part because of the Telecommunications Act passed by Congress in 1996 establishing a clear federal guarantee of competition in the telephone directory business.

The Telecommunications Act required telephone companies, which had a monopoly on yellow page advertising, to allow independent directory publishers access to telephone numbers and listings at reasonable rates, terms and conditions.

That came about in part because of lobbying by the Association of Directory Publishers, an international trade association of more than 180 independent telephone directory publishers.

This group protested alleged anti-competitive practices by local phone companies, which had monopoly control of subscriber listings because that was information they gathered as part of providing local phone services.

The group accused telephone companies of using their control over subscriber listings to restrict its access to the data with unreasonable prices or refusing to sell updates or listings at any price or terms.

The 30-worker company, formerly located at 500 S. Geneva Road, moved to its present Orem location, a 1,300-square-foot office at 1145 S. 1680 West in December. Rocky Mountain received a $350,000 investment in October 2003 from UTFC Financing Solutions LLC, a start-up financing company in Salt Lake City.

Rocky Mountain co-founders Crawley and Mike Sego said they will use the investment to produce three more phone books, which would otherwise have taken an extra 12 to 18 months to fund through operations.

"With the funding from Steve Grizzell and UTFC, we can reach our economy of scale more quickly," said Sego. "With this investment we are able to reach that level where our ability to produce products can outweigh our cost."

By Grace Leong

SOURCE: Daily Herald