Article printed in Business Section of New Jersey Star Ledger October 9th, 2002

by Beth Fitzgerald

STAR LEDGER STAFF

Meryl Raiffe pulls a copy of "Silverwing" off a shelf at her company Allbook Inc. in Millington.

"I really like this book," Raiffe says. This is a good and evil story about a bat. It has a lot of information about bat culture, and it's an exciting adventure story."

Don't bother asking Raiffe about the latest Tom Clancy thriller. With six children and a growing business, she doesn't have much spare time to curl up with books for grown-ups. But she has read more than half the 2,800 titles in her stock room, and she is familiar with the work of every author she sells.

Raiffe's seven year old company is a new player in the world of school book fairs, which New York-based Scholastic Corp. still controls with a virtual monopoly. And while Allbook has cut into less than 1 percent of the business, people are noticing.

Short Hills parent Amy Laperruque has worked with Allbook for the past six years on the Glenwood elementary school book fair. She used to use Scholastic.

"With Allbook,we can choose the books and the quality is at a very high level." she said. "I used to give Scholastic a list of books,but they were not very receptive to customizing the book fair."

Raiffe doesn't pay herself a salary. "I do this for love. It's my contribution to the school community." Her husband, Bruce, is president of his family-owned company, Edison-based Gund, the nations leading soft toy maker.

A critical reader of children's fiction,Raiffe refuses to stock what she determines are merely "books that pander to the popular culture." To make it on Raiffe's list, "the book has to be well written and illustrated and have something to say to children, something beneficial."

Allbook handles about 55 book fairs a year and Raiffe figures she can expand to 75 a year before she will need another truck. "The big challenge is the logistics behind delivering the books to the schools when they need them," she said.

She was initiated into the book fair game when her oldest son, now 16, was in preschool. Raiffe volunteered to run the book fair at his school, and she didn't think much of the book selection. The following year, she called up the publishers and chose the books herself.

Then another school asked her to run their book fair. The following year, five other schools called her out of the blue. Everyone found her by word of mouth.

"It occurred to me that maybe I had a business here," she said.

Today her business has annual revenues of about $500,000. There are 10 employees, nearly all moms like Raiffe who volunteer to run book fairs at their children's schools.

Her business is tiny compared with Scholastic, which supplies 100,000 school book fairs a year in all 50 states, reaching about 30 million children.

Raiffe said she is more selective than Scholastic and carries more expensive books. Allbook's average book is $8, "but some of our best books cost $35, and there are a lot of schools that serve populations that can't afford to do this kind of book fair," Raiffe said.

Scholastic declined to comment on its book fair business.

The average school book fair brings in revenue of $12,000, but some can hit $30,000, Raiffe said.

Book fairs are an efficient way to raise money for schools, according to Valerie Szkodny, who works at Allbook and volunteers at the annual book fair at Bedwell School in Bedminster.

We get about 60 parent volunteers to work the book fair, and the only expense we have is buying pizza for the break-down crew on the final day.

Beth Fitzgerald can be reached at efitzgerald@starledger.com or (973)392-4111