Mapmaker Rand McNally Turns 150

Robert Apatoff, President and CEO of Rand McNally & Co., talks during an interview in his office Friday, Sept. 29, 2006, in Skokie, Ill. The storied mapmaker, marking its 150th anniversary this year, has improved its sales and profitability after years of difficulty and slow start in the internet era. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green) (M. Spencer Green - AP)

McNally subsequently bought out Rand, and the McNally family owned the business for four generations until selling it in 1997 to New York investment firm AEA Investors Inc. for $430 million.

By that time, the mapping industry was being completely changed by the Internet and technology. But Rand McNally found itself outmaneuvered by startup ventures.

"They were caught looking when Mapquest and the dot-coms came in and did the door-to-door directions and the online stuff," said Henry Poirot, an IMTA board member and three-decade veteran of the map and book industry.

The company racked up so much debt trying to keep up with its online rivals that it ended up in bankruptcy court, where a majority stake was bought in 2003 by current owner Leonard Green & Partners, a Los Angeles investment firm.

Consequences remain from the slow start on the Web.

An analysis of traffic on map sites by comScore Media Metrix found just 1.6 million visits to randmcnally.com last month, down 11 percent from a year earlier and dwarfed by those to Maps.com (71.4 million), Mapquest (48.6 million) Google Maps (23.4 million) and Yahoo Maps (20 million).

Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University, thinks one of the biggest problems for Rand McNally is that so many maps are available for free.

"They have an incredible history and product lineup," Calkins said. "The challenge is the world has changed so much in the last decade that the need for their core product has really diminished."

That's not the view of Apatoff, a veteran marketing executive who since arriving as president and CEO in June 2003 has tried to reinvigorate what many saw as a tired brand through innovation, without abandoning the company's strengths.

Rand McNally closed its 25 retail stores in 2003 to cut costs as part of the makeover, but it still sells maps and other paper products in over 55,000 retail stores in North America.

The trademark road atlas, now in its 83rd edition, remains its best-selling product by far. That's one reason the company isn't striving to become like Mapquest, Yahoo Maps or Google Maps.

"We're the only ones (of that group) that actually sell product in the store," said Apatoff, 47. "While we encourage people to go online, it is truly a different business model."