- Karen Mitchell, For the Camera

Robert Auman, president of Peak Fulfillment Inc. in Lyons, stands near a selection of the products the company ships to patrons of public TV and radio programs.

 - Paul Aiken/Daily Camera

In a world filled with broken promises, VisABILITY and Peak Fulfillment of Colorado deliver -- all the way from Boulder County. That cherished "NPR/Weekend Edition" mug you sip from, and the favorite "Car Talk" T-Shirt you don on Saturday mornings came to you via Lyons.

     VisABILITY, founded in the mid-1980s by John Burke and his wife, Janice Gavan, is the national premium supplier for some 33 program brands, among them, National Public Radio’s "Prairie Home Companion," "All Things Considered," and "Marketplace."

Premiums include "Car Talk" CDs and audio tapes featuring "Car Talk" hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi -- a.k.a. Click and Clack -- Carl Kasell "Bobbleheads," and tattoos from "This American Life." Audio products are dubbed in Lyons, and other items are manufactured in Asia and in the United States, including Colorado.

"Goodbye Blue Monday, of Boulder, does most of our screen-printing for T-shirts and some embroidery, and Moore Enterprises in Longmont designed and manufactures the popular "Car Talk" Roadside Survival Kit," Burke says. "We’re just starting to use the Nite Ize flashlight accessories, made in Boulder, in a product line for emergency service organizations."

     Peak Fulfillment, incorporated in 2001, manages the merchandise, warehousing, labeling, and delivering it to customers. Peak also handles ecommerce for radio and TV shows such as "Car Talk," the BBC’s "Red Dwarf," and PBS’s "Great Museums." Together, Peak and VisABILITY operate from 15,000 square feet divided between two buildings on Main Street in Lyons.

     "We morphed into different companies in response to client needs," says Gavan, former executive director of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Weld County, and a former program director for a battered women’s shelter. "Producers and station executives would come to us for help with mailing their premiums to members. We quickly developed new services and products to meet those challenges."

    When NPR wanted to provide T-shirts with logos to its affiliates, VisABILITY developed an inventory program so that small stations could buy the premiums in smaller quantities.

     In 1996, "Car Talk’s" producers wanted an ecommerce solution for merchandise. Now, when shoppers in search of "Car Talk" gear go to the Shameless Commerce division of the show’s Web site, they are connected directly to Lyons.

     Doug Mayer, senior Web producer for the "Car Talk" section of cars.com, says that listener connection is an asset to the show.

     "They did our first premiums, T-shirts and mugs with tire track designs back in 1987, and they’ve been with us ever since," Mayer says. "Because they hear directly from our most die-hard fans, they’re tapping right into our audience’s feelings about the show. They treat our listeners like friends, which they are to us, and we get valuable, unfiltered feedback this way."

     Premiums represent a particularly enjoyable aspect of "Car Talk," he says. "We’re a small operation, not in a position to do customer service ourselves.  If a "Car Talk" mug breaks, Peak Fulfillment deals with it promptly, no questions asked. That’s invaluable to us."

     Burke says his primary market is public radio programming distributed to about 500 stations, whose members tend to be well educated and socially conscious. "We service affinity markets," he says, "where relationships are more important than transactions. ecommerce and fulfillment are what we do, but our real business has become protecting and enhancing the relationship between our clients and their constituents."

     After maintaining a low business profile, Burke says he is actively seeking new local and nationwide clients.

     "While we’re designed to service the high-end, national nonprofits, I believe there are some local for-profit companies that would be delighted with our service quality. We’re trying to diversify beyond the public radio and nonprofit segments, to be broadly based with a for-profit component, and the most logical next step is a local one."

     In the past, Burke says, he has turned away clients such as the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall because of outdated computer systems and facilities.

     "We’ve expanded and spent a prodigious amount of money on new hardware and software, some of the same technology used by John Hancock. We expect to hire a dozen additional people over the next two years. We’re talking with prospective clients - two museums, a national film archive, and an outdoor recreation company."

     Peak is a boutique operation, he says. "Most fulfillment companies are larger, but what we do is special. When somebody donates $150 for a coffee mug, it had better be well-packaged and shipped on time."

     Burke and Gavan were in a unique position to fulfill the needs of nonprofit companies in search of intense fulfillment service. Gavan was the associate director of admissions for two private colleges. Burke, a former vice president of the University of Northern Colorado and its Secretary of Board Trustees from 1979 to 1986, knew public broadcasting. His supervision extended to KUNC.

     "Fulfillment is a big, highly-capitalized industry operating on an assembly line basis, Burke says, "but with a lack of emotional commitment. Our end-users already have emotional relationships to the premiums they receive, so we do it differently, more personally."

     For example, when "Car Talk" forwarded a note to Lyons from a woman who was ordering a "Car Talk" CD, the staff took extra pains to accommodate.

     "She said her 81-year old father was ill," Burke says. "He lived in Australia and she had been sending him tapes of the show which he loved. He said, 'I want to go out laughing.'  So we threw in three other CDs, videotape, a hat and a signed picture of Tom and Ray Magliozzi that we took off our wall. We sent it to Australia overnight."

     Those are the kinds of acts that a Lyons location engenders, Burke says. "We`re here to stay. Colorado is the end of the yellow brick road. There will never be enough space for us here, but it wouldn’t be fun to lose this edge."

     For more information, go to www.peakfulfillment.com.  

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Last Update: 07/16/04