-One of North America's largest travel map and atlas distributors, East View Map Link (maplink.com) recently completed the purchase of Longitude Books (longitudebooks.com). Longitude offers book and maps for sale based on recommended reading lists for various travel destinations.
East View Map Link (EVML) has spent much of the last two years re-opening the supply of travel maps from locations all over the world and making them available again to North American consumers and resellers.
One of these resellers was Longitude Books based in New York City. A longtime customer of EVML, Longitude's model is to create a recommended reading and travel preparation list for particular destinations, and present these lists to travelers who were either referred by their tour-company or travel agent. The travelers can then buy the books and maps to prepare for their trips.
"This acquisition is about more than just economics," Group says. "Our bookseller customers will have a built in editorial team to bolster their travel departments. They can choose to buy their books through us or get them from their favorite wholesaler/distributor. Our goal is to build better travel departments because better travel departments sell more maps."
On the other hand, Group states Longitude's customer base will benefit as well from a selection of maps and atlases ten times the size of the current selection. "It did not make sense for Longitude to carry a wide AND deep selection of map related product", Group proclaims, "but now they have our entire map inventory at their complete disposal."
EVML will have the day to day Longitude business absorbed within the normal routine by the end of the calendar year. Once that is completed, "our plans are to take full advantage of everything we have invested in during the past two years to get us where we are", Group states. "We will spend a lot of time in 2013 getting better at what we do. We have a special opportunity staring us right in the face. Being the best at what we do will only insure our future existence."
