April, 2005

A pair of Utah entrepreneurs who arrived in Denver a little over a year ago have turned an idea for a community yellow pages into a $1 million, 30-employee company.

Rob Crawley and Mike Sego didn't even have a published book when they first went door-to-door to businesses in Parker, Castle Rock and Evergreen, they said.

But their concept was to offer a telephone book tailored to the community that the book would service: A local artist would design the cover, it would have quick references to school numbers for parents, easy-to-read double columns in large print, residential and business listings mixed together, an introduction to the history and offerings of the area, and a community calendar. Profits would come from the sale of advertising.

Their competition, of course, would be mammoth Dex Media, divested by Qwest Communications International in order to stave off a Qwest bankruptcy, but still a very profitable business with a sales force of 1,000 in the 14 states where it publishes 259 phone directories.

"We saw an opportunity here because there hasn't been anything quite like the community phone book we are producing," said Crawley, 32, now president of Rocky Mountain Community Directories.

Crawley, a CPA, and Sego, who holds an MBA, had previously worked for Utah-based Phone Directories Company, and that's where their concept for a smaller, community-oriented phone book took shape. The pair wanted to strike out on their own, but not in their home state of Utah.

"Too many phone books are already there," says Sego, 33. So the two loaded up their car and zigzagged across Colorado looking for a place to start. They settled on the outlying communities of Denver and Trinidad.

At the time, they had no investors.

"I found one initial investor through an investment seminar," said Crawley. "It took one month of bombardment with material on the industry to talk him into it. It wasn't easy."

That investor then sought out other money people.

In the calendar year since, the firm has grown to the point of serving 13 communities and taking in an arch from Broomfield and Westminster to Arvada, Golden, Evergreen, Ken Caryl, Highlands Ranch, Castle Rock and Parker.

Sego, the company's vice president, says Castle Rock's first-year distribution of 18,000 directories will be expanded to 24,000 books in year two, with Sedalia and Larkspur added to the directory; Parker's directory will increase from 24,000 to 28,000; and the Highlands Ranch book is in its first year with a distribution of 40,000.

Most important, the books seem to have delivered what Sego and Crawley promised wary merchants.

"They have good introductory rates," says Mazie Baalman, owner of Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory in Castle Rock. "Usually it doesn't do any good for a business like ours to place an ad in the yellow pages because it just gets lost. But they offered coupons in their book. That was beneficial."

By Mike Coppock

SOURCE: ColoradoBiz