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Making its mark: US Markerboard
Source: Boston Business Journal, Pages 32-33
By Sean McFadden, Friday, April 6, 2007

This is a direct excerpt from the Boston Business Journal.

HOLBROOK -- Scott Newman has learned to manage fast-paced growth in a business that has evolved from window blinds to whiteboards.

Newman's company, US Markerboard -- incorporated in 2000 as Brite Visual Products Inc. -- has made a big impression in the marketplace as an online distributor of school and office fixtures and furnishings, which it has grown from its niche in whiteboards.

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Connecting with Amazon: Making their mark on the Internet
Source: The Patriot Ledger, Page 27
By Julie Jette, Thursday, February 10, 2005

This is a direct excerpt from The Patriot Ledger.

QUINCY - Tucked away in one of a half-dozen brick buildings on Quincy's gritty Water Street, US Markerboard doesn't exactly announce its presence to the world.

It doesn't even have a sign visible from the street.

But the 9-year-old office fixtures retailer is about to become more visible on the Internet thanks to a new agreement to sell its products on Amazon.com, one of the largest online merchants.

Like the much larger Amazon, US Markerboard is one of the few purely online retailers to survive the bust of the Internet bubble. It represents 26 office products manufacturers and has about 500,000 visitors a month to its web site, usmarkerboard.com.

"When it was impossible for a dot-com company to make a profit, we were making a profit from Day One," said Scott Newman, 38, who owns the business with his father, Bob Newman, 64.

US Markerboard's product list includes about 6,000 items for sale including whiteboards, blackboards, office and school furniture and other products. Manufacturers ship products directly to US Markerboard's clients, about 39 percent of whom order custom-made products.

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick uses a whiteboard in his office that was ordered through US Markerboard, and Saturday Night Live once ordered 25 red folding chairs through the site.

The Newmans say their presence on Amazon.com should help propel the company's sales growth rate to about 35 percent this year, up from 22 percent last year. Bob Newman said revenues at the 14-employee company in 2004 were in the "mid-seven digits."

"It's going to give me an opportunity to move product to customers I might not have had otherwise," Scott Newman said. "It's also going to add name recognition for us."

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Advertisers Bid, You Click, They Pay
Source: The Washington Post, Page E01
By David A. Vise, May 13, 2004

This is a direct excerpt from The Washington Post.

Google's business model reflects that twofold desire. In many ways, the search engine has come to resemble a free-circulation newspaper that makes its profit by selling ads. In Google's case, the company gives away the search engine for free to Internet users seeking information on the Internet, and then, like the newspaper, makes its money on clearly marked ads.

One difference is that in a free-circulation newspaper, top dollar can buy prime positioning for ads. But on Google, just being the highest bidder doesn't guarantee that an ad will appear in the top-tier position.

The ranking of ads on Google is the product of two factors: the price a company is willing to bid on keywords and the frequency with which consumers click on the ad. Even if a company bids higher on certain words than any other firm bids, if consumers are not clicking, that ad will move down to a less prominent spot.

Google said it takes this approach so that computer users see the most relevant ads first. Industry experts say the practice also makes good business sense since Google gets paid only when consumers click on an ad.

"They don't want dead ads at the top of their Web site," said Scott T. Newman, president of US Markerboard, who spends a few hours each day tweaking his ads and bids and said he has built a profitable, growing business entirely through search. "They give you a little bit of a break if you get a good click-through rate."

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