School Aids, a nearly 40-year-old family owned business that sells educational materials and classroom supplies, acquired a Birmingham, Alabama-based competitor late last year—a move that is expected to enable the company to double its sales volume.
School Aids president and CEO owner Jamey Firnberg says his company acquired Teacher Direct in a deal that closed Dec. 31 for an undisclosed price. School Aids has eight brick and mortar stores throughout the South as well as a catalog-based business. Teacher Direct is a catalog-based business only that operates out of a 59,000-square-foot warehouse in an industrial area of Birmingham.
With the acquisition, Firnberg estimates School Aids will increase its catalog distribution tenfold, from about 55,000 catalogs to about 500,000. However, sales likely will not increase by the same magnitude, says Firnberg, who estimates they will double.
“We’re looking at catalog and Internet as the big opportunities,” he says, noting that, despite the proliferation of online sales, institutional customers in the education sector still use catalogs quite a bit.
“Some of them are still using paper for POs, a fax machine and mail,” he says. “We still get POs in the mail from schools and school boards, so there is still a booming catalog business.”
With the acquisition the number of full- and part-time School Aid employees will increase from 80 to nearly 100. School Aids declines to disclose company revenues.
School Aid was started in the mid-1970s by Jamey Firnberg’s parents. Today, he and three of his brothers own and operate the business.
—Stephanie Riegel
