The story
Founded by Walter Montgomery Jackson in 1895.1
The company that became encyclopedia publisher Grolier Incorporated was founded by Walter M. Jackson (1863–1923) as the Grolier Society. Jackson had been the partner of Horace Everett Hooper in publishing the 10th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica and in developing its 11th edition. He split with Hooper in 1908–1909 in a nasty legal fight after failing to wrest control of the Britannica from Hooper.
The Grolier Society specialized in publishing extra-fine editions of classics and rare literature. The Society was named after the Grolier Club, which had been founded in 1884 to advance the arts involved in making books and which was itself named after a well-known French bibliophile, Jean Grolier de Servières.
In 1910, Jackson purchased the rights to publish the British The Children's Encyclopædia under the name The Book of Knowledge.
In 1936, the company was acquired by its senior sales executive, Fred P. Murphy, who had joined the firm in 1912. Grolier's common stock began trading publicly in 1954, and it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1965.
Under Murphy's leadership, by the mid-1940s, Grolier became one of the largest publishers of general encyclopedias, including The Book of Knowledge and the Encyclopedia Americana. Grolier also published the Grolier Encyclopedia (based on the Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopedia and the Doubleday's Encyclopedia) (1941), American Peoples Encyclopedia (1962), The New Book of Knowledge (1966), the Academic American Encyclopedia (1980), The New Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia (1985 CD-ROM), and the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia (1995).
Grolier conducted its encyclopedia sales through subsidiaries Americana Corporation; The Grolier Society; Inc.; R.H. Hinckley Company; Spencer International Press, Inc.; and The Richards Company, Inc. Each subsidiary distributed publications as designated by Grolier. Murphy encouraged a productive rivalry among the subsidiaries, giving their executives broad authority and profit-sharing incentives.
In 1959, Murphy hired John G. Ryan, formerly president of competitor P.F. Collier & Son, as president of The Richards Company. By 1968, Richards' sales, distributing the American Peoples Encyclopedia, exceeded that of the other Grolier encyclopedia subsidiaries.
In 1968, Grolier's annual sales were over $181 million, and the company held a 30 percent market share as the leading publisher of encyclopedias in the United States. Grolier also established a successful mail order subsidiary.
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In the 1970s, Grolier declined financially. Fred Murphy retired, and the company merged the sales subsidiaries into what became a less profitable unitary sales force. Grolier also made ill-fated investments in non-publishing ventures, including mobile homes. In 1976, Grolier lost $77 million on sales of $247 million. It threatened to file for bankruptcy if its creditors did not agree to restructure its debts. In the 1980s, with its mail order business expanding, Grolier returned to profitability.
On August 8, 1986, Grolier announced a joint venture partnership with Hal Roach Studios and Robert Halmi, Inc. (both of these companies were later known as Qintex Entertainment) to set up a joint venture, Grolier Home Video, which was designed to set up adaptations of the Grolier book properties.
In 1988, Grolier was purchased by the French media company Hachette, which owned a well-known French-language encyclopedia, the Hachette Encyclopedia. The sale price was $450 million. Hachette was later absorbed by the French conglomerate, the Lagardère Group.
In 1995, Grolier acquired Children's Press, moving its operations from Chicago to New York City and Danbury, Connecticut.
In 1999, Grolier had revenues of $450 million and earnings of approximately $45 million, with $4.5 million in Internet revenues. It had a US$100 million international business, primarily located in the UK, Canada and Asia.
Grolier was purchased by Scholastic for US$400 million in June 2000. The new owners projected a 30% increase in operating income, although historically Grolier had experienced earnings of 7% to 8% on income.
Staff reductions as a means of controlling costs followed soon thereafter, even while an effort was made to augment the sales force. Cuts occurred every year between 2000 and 2007, leaving a much-depleted work force to carry out the duties of maintaining a large encyclopedia database. Scholastic, which specializes in works for the K-8 market (Kindergarten-to-8th grade), has sought to position the Encyclopedia Americana as a reference resource for schools. It remains to be seen whether that strategy, applied to a venerable upper-level (even adult-level) publication, will work in the long run.
The name Grolier is retained as the Scholastic website Scholastic GO. The company exists as Grolier Incorporated.
From Wikipedia’s article on Grolier, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4