Walk into Stephen A. Geppi's office, but watch where you step.
You don't want to damage that 1938 Terry and the Pirates miniature book over there. Careful with your elbow, you might disturb the Little Lulu paint book old enough to have belonged to your grandmother. Sure, check out the Oriole Park built of trading cards, but don't bump into the original drawing of Mr. Geppi shaking hands with Superman.
In fact, on this day, an extensive comic-book collection he just acquired occupies most of Mr. Geppi's office at the headquarters of Diamond Comic Distributors, so he is temporarily working out of another spot in the building. You might say he has been booted from his office by Spider-Man and the Flash.
Which seems only fair, because they helped put Mr. Geppi there in the first place.
Starting from his weekend diversion of trading comics at flea markets about 20 years ago, back when he was working as a letter carrier, Mr. Geppi has gone on to become the biggest distributor of American comic books, supplying approximately half the market. That's good for sales of more than $200 million a year.
(And to think, just like every other American mom, Mr. Geppi's mother threw away his childhood comics collection.)
Such success enables you to operate out of nearly two floors in a striking glass office building in Timonium. It lets you indulge a childhood dream and buy a big piece of the hometown baseball club. And it also allows you to purchase a signature hometown publication, as Mr. Geppi, 44, did last month in acquiring Baltimore magazine.
Beyond saying he'll increase the magazine's size, Mr. Geppi won't reveal many of his plans for the publication. He plans to retain editor Ramsey Flynn. The editorial staff, cut under previous president Susan Souders Obrecht, seems likely to increase. The "Best of Baltimore" issue is a keeper. But don't look for many more covers that blare "Cancer City."
Q: Why did you buy Baltimore magazine?
A: Being a Baltimore resident all my life, I thought it would be a unique privilege to own something I consider so important in town. . . . The bottom line is I saw it as an opportunity to interact with the Baltimore community. I own Diamond Comic Distributors, the largest distributor of comics in the world, but that doesn't really give me a lot of opportunity to interact with the business community here. So I saw Baltimore magazine as an opportunity to do that as well.
Q: How much did you pay for the magazine?
A: Well, we haven't told anybody. The best I've told anybody is that it was in excess of seven figures.
Q: Did you view this strictly as a business venture or partly as something of a civic-minded nature?
A: It's more driven by that than it is business, though I do expect to be successful with it. I wouldn't do anything that I didn't think I could be successful with it, but it is more driven by the other.
Q: How did you get into the comics business?
A: When I was about 13, I had to quit school and go to work to support my mom. . . . I was always working. I worked at a zillion different jobs. . . . Then I got a job at the post office as a letter carrier, and I was there five years. And it was during those five years that I rediscovered comics.
I was on vacation in Wildwood, N.J., when my nephew, who's now 29 years old and a regional manager in my company, was reading a comic book. I got a tremendous nostalgic flashback, and I decided I was going to check this out. Lo and behold, I started knocking on doors of people on my mail route, and I found some old comics. The interesting thing is I found out the value of these . . . so I started doing conventions and shows on the weekends. Before I knew it, I was making more money on the weekend than I was on my job.
One thing led to another, and I decided to quit my job at the post office -- a nice, steady job -- and open an unprecedented comic-book store. I never dreamed I would make any money in the store. I thought I would just keep doing conventions and shows. But it turns out there weren't any stores in town, and I was an attraction to collectors in town and out of town. . . .
In 1980, after I opened my store in Harborplace, I started to distribute almost by default. People would come to me and say, "I'm going to open a little comics store. Can you help me out?" . . . [His distributor] was going out of business, and I saw a value in his company. . . . I made deal with him to take over the business, and suddenly I had a warehouse in Boston, Florida and, of course, in Baltimore, plus a large sub-distributor in Philly. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Q: What do you like about the magazine?
A: I think the editorial staff has done a good job, notwithstanding the limitations they've had under the previous ownership. The size of the magazine is a great hindrance right now in that it's only 100 pages. . . . This is something we hope to immediately address and bring it back to the glory days of Baltimore magazine -- when it was, like, 148 pages -- and become more things to more people.
Right now, the typical demographic on Baltimore magazine stereotypes the magazine as something for a 45-year-old or older making $100,000 a year, and I believe it can be a magazine for everyone in Baltimore -- certainly at a minimum for people in their 20s and 30s who have a pretty affluent lifestyle right now themselves. If the magazine is to be called Baltimore magazine, it should be about all Baltimoreans.
Q: What don't you like about the magazine?
A: As I said, I didn't like the size of it, for one thing. I think some of the covers could be more enticing. . . .
My personal likes and dislikes are not really as relevant on this magazine, because I'm a firm believer in the best marketing approach is to find out what the market wants and create a product -- as opposed to create a product and try to shove it down the market's throat. I believe we need to do things like focus groups, polls, if you will, that will inquire, "What would you like to see in Baltimore magazine?" If you get a consensus, then you try to deliver it. Otherwise, I'd be trying to put out a magazine to please myself.
Q: Do you have any specific ideas on what you would like to change?
A: In a more generic sense, I won't get into detail of what we'd like to change. I'd like to leave an element of surprise. But I do think the magazine should have something for everyone, so when you pick up the magazine, you can turn immediately to a section that you find you can call your own. And whether you be the stereotypical 45-year-old who makes $100,000 a year or the 25-year-old who perhaps is interested in finding out what's going on in his local town. . . .
One thing we'd like to do is a lot more people articles and pictures. People love to read about people. People magazine is one of the leading magazines in the country for that reason. They love to see pictures of people they know about or have read about. In the Sunpaper in the Today section, I always open that up to look inside to see who's been at the latest cocktail party and what's going on in town.
Q: So more well-known local personalities -- you think there might be more of that?
A: Absolutely. . . . But there are people who are doing things on different levels in town, all Baltimoreans, whether they be the big players in town and whatever they're accomplishing or maybe someone who's carving out a niche for themselves up and coming. I think there needs to be a place to give birth to their entree into the Baltimore community to let people know who they are.
It's one link from a community standpoint. You may live in Roland Park, you may live in Towson, you may live in Little Italy or wherever, but we can be -- and hopefully will be -- a common denominator for people so that we can identify as a community together, as Baltimoreans.
Q: After you purchased it, you said the magazine should be a celebration of Baltimore. What did you mean by that?
A: Well, I didn't want to imply that we're only going to write puff articles about our friends in the magazine and never say anything that was controversial. I do think that the driving theme of the magazine should be a celebration of Baltimore, so that, particularly if you're a visitor to Baltimore, you come in and you pick up Baltimore magazine, you'll be intrigued by it. . . . I'm very prejudiced toward Baltimore. I've lived here all my life, and I think it's the greatest city in the country. And I'd like other people to know all the great features it has.
Q: Do you feel that the magazine hasn't reflected all of Baltimore? For example, do you think that the people in the neighborhood you grew up in Little Italy read the magazine?
A: I'd like to think that they will now as a result of my ownership. [Laughs.] There are certain who do. Baltimore is a mixed bag. It's a blue-collar town in many respects, but there's quite a social atmosphere in Baltimore, too, an upper echelon, if you will.
There are people in every neighborhood who are no doubt getting it and reading it, but our job is to increase that and make people more aware that there is something for them -- they don't feel like we're always targeting people who buy an expensive product, that there is the average guy's appeal, too. There are quite a number of advertisers who wouldn't look to a magazine like that because they feel quite probably that's not their audience. . . .
We're not going to try to manufacture the news and create news and put a square peg in a round hole. The news is the news, and we'll try to tell it as it needs to be told. But our purpose is not to be the National Enquirer either. There's a balance between the ++ two. . . .
Q: You said right after you bought the magazine that you had a surprise in store? What is it?
A: We've got a few little surprises up our sleeve. I can't really get into that. I have one pretty significant idea that relates to the magazine that I hope to be able to launch. It will be promoted in the magazine, but it's not necessarily a feature in and of itself in the magazine on an ongoing basis. It's something that the magazine will support. I don't want to get too specific here. Better leave it that. It's a promotional idea that I think the whole town, if we accomplish it, will be very interested in.
Q: Will people notice a difference with the next issue?
A: The January issue was almost to bed when we bought the magazine, so probably more the February issue.
Q: Do you think you can get the message across to the editorial staff that, even though you have connections to the local business community, they're not constrained in writing about Baltimore business?
A: We've talked to the staff that, regardless of my own personal involvement in the community or the Orioles or anything else, we want to be sensitive that this doesn't turn into a "20/20," expose magazine. That's not our mission statement. We do feel that the facts are what we want to report. We don't want to camouflage a story just because our friends might be offended. But yet our purpose will not be to offend our friends. . . . I think there's somewhere in between. Any journalist's job is to tell the story like it is and not create his or her own motive: I'm going to get somebody. . . .
Rome's not going to be built in a day, so we'll try, over the period of the first few months, each month to see a progression of change that will develop into a whole new Baltimore magazine.
Ray Frager is an assistant sports editor at The Sun.