Boad members,
I am pleased to communicate that we will be announcing today that ARRL is now the publisher of the Gordon West family of amateur radio license prep products.
We are very excited about Gordon now coming on as our National Instructor. He has great ideas about expanding the ARRL network of instructors and growing the ranks of new hams. The decades long relationship between Gordon and Bob Inderbitzen
has made the post-closing discussions go extremely well.
This was a very long process that took significant work.
Bob Inderbitzen was excellent managing a continuing dialog with Master Publishing to bring the cost of the transaction down to where we had been advised its market value should be.
When talks had completely stalled and we were parting ways, I was able to ask
Director Fred Kemmerer to step in as a fresh face at the negotiating table to restart the dialog and get things moving again. This never would have happened without his careful and caring interaction with Master Publishing.
Finally, we could not have closed the transaction without
Diane Middleton spending many hours with Master Publishing establishing and explaining the legal and financial terms and agreeing on the logistics of moving inventory between the parties.
This exercise went quicker than we had been advised it might take, and I credit the great work of the team in closing the deal successfully. We are expecting that this will become an important brand in helping us grow the revenue of our
publications business. It will also build bench strength in these kinds of transactions in the future where we look for more opportunities to grow revenue and service the amateur radio market.
We are contacting dealers now and will publish a press release later in the day and also feature in the ARRL Letter tomorrow.
Thanks
David