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Learning electronically Although Franklin was founded in 1981 as a PC producer, the New Jersey-based company really began to make its mark in 1986 with the release of the $80 hand-held Spelling Ace spellchecker. Franklin quickly went headlong into electronic books with great success, garnering 80 percent of the market for these PC-ROM card-powered little books by 1988. While Franklin has ditched its PC manufacturing to focus its attention on electronic books, the company still publishes a wide variety of literature, from the Bible to the Physicians' Desk Reference, and even the Total Baseball Encyclopedia, with statistics going back to 1876, under their well-known BOOKMAN line. Franklin holds the rights to over 200 titles from respected hard-copy publishers like Harper/Collins, Merriam Webster, and the Oxford University Press. Getting the world to own a Franklin Domestically, Franklin products can be purchased at over 30,000 retail establishments. While the weakness of the domestic consumer electronics market has hurt Franklin's earnings, the company is investing heavily in expanding its international markets, including those in Asia and Latin America. Its U.K. division is its largest. In 1996, Franklin acquired Rolodex Electronics, producer of electronic organizers and databanks. In May 1997, Franklin hired a Taiwanese company to make and sell handheld reference devices for Chinese customers. Hoping to take advantage of opportunities in voice recognition, text-to-speech, and voice synthesis, Franklin is pushing ahead with a new voice technology team of software and hardware specialists. In a slump Falling profits hounded Franklin through 1996, causing the publisher to seek guidance from investment bank Goldman Sachs. Chairman and CEO Morton David, who had run the company since 1984, announced that he would exit the company in 1998 appointing H. Andrew Cross to assume his position. However, when Cross decided to leave the company as well in 1999 after only one year on the job, Franklin Electronic Publishers appointed Barry J. Lipsky to the position of acting president. The recent departure of these CEOs might be due to the company's constantly declining profits. Franklin lost $30.2 million in 1998 and announced plans to cut 15 percent of its workforce in 1999 because of the loss in revenue. The company was also forced to close two offices in Italy and Singapore. Profit losses were blamed on disappointing sales of the REX line pocket-size organizers. Franklin sold the line to Xircom in September 1999. Hope for the future Franklin Electronic Publishers launched the first hand-held electronic reading device, the Rocket eBook, in 1999. The device, capable of downloading digital books from online bookstores, sells in retail stores for approximately $300 and uses electronic editions of books from major publishers known as RocketEditions. The company hopes that the product will boost dwindling sales. Franklin also juiced up 10 of its electronic reference products in 1999 by upgrading their databases and providing the gadgets with larger screens. With 14 million "books" sold, Franklin hopes that these improvements will enable the company to compete with the likes of Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments. An alliance with Microsoft in summer 2000 also has provided reasons for optimism. Franklin.com is now an authorized bookstore of the software company.
Franklin does not post job openings externally. Resumes should be faxed or mailed to the head office in Burlington, New Jersey, with applicants specifying for which job they are applying. Franklin seeks talented young applicants with foreign language skills to help launch new products in international markets. There are a broad range of opportunities, however, for applicants with skills in everything from engineering and programming to marketing. Yet, insiders warn that now may not be the best time to seek a career with Franklin Electronic Publishers due to a recent round of layoffs and the company's decreasing profitability.
Comfortable and pleasant Franklin employees work normal business hours except when involved with a "hot project." With its "casual but respectable" dress code and "friendly and diverse staff," workers find Franklin to be a "comfortable, low stress environment" and just a "nice" place to work. Product developers find themselves broken up into small teams, working on their projects all the way up until release. Workers find the company's global focus and increasingly multilingual workforce challenging and intriguing respectively. Employees say they expect Franklin to become more of a household name, as plans are in the works for a television advertising campaign. Creative people interested in a forward-looking high-tech company with a "relaxed atmosphere" would be wise to check out Franklin Electronic Publishers.
Human Resources
Electronic reference products;REX PC Companion;REX PRO;Rocket eBook
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