Terence Flynn
A poster publisher celebrates 50 years of chutzpah and graphics.
by Meredith Schwartz -- Gifts & Decorative Accessories, 6/1/2004
Founder, Portal Publications, Novato, California
Gifts & Decorative Accessories: How did you get into the poster publishing business?
Terence Flynn: I'd just finished my studies at Stanford law school when I saw an ad for a bullfight poster. It was printed in 13 different colors, just beautiful. I said "I can do that," so I scraped together $800, took out a one-inch advertisement offering bullfight posters in The New Yorker, The Nation, Harper's, and a couple of others. Of course, we didn't have the posters. My wife was appalled.
GDA: What was the response?
TF: We collected about $6,000. After a month I sent out a postcard saying our supply was depleted, and left for Spain and the poster factory. But they refused to sell me any because they wanted to protect their importer. So I convinced a friend, a Champagne producer whom I met on the journey, to buy the posters as advertisements. I ended up with 19,000 bullfighter posters with a line at the bottom promoting his Champagne.
GDA: Did they sell?
TF: Absolutely. In addition to those first orders, a lot of bookstores took them. Our first really big customer was Bloomingdale's. We had some difficulty getting reorders, but they gave in eventually.
GDA: What came after the bullfighters?
TF: In 1958, we came out with our first travel posters and then followed up with children's posters. It was fun working with artists. In those days we paid them $250, and we got to keep the art. Now you pay a $1,000 advance and get a transparency. Artists are much more aware of what their work is worth today.
GDA: What were the next big steps?
TF: We started greeting cards in 1971, a big change for our business. Then there were the Arthur Rackham and Maxfield Parrish posters. Anne Geddes was a phenomenon that probably will not be repeated. Since 1992, we have done over $133 million in Geddes. It was amazing.
GDA: Where has it all brought you?
TF: It's 50 years later and we've became a success. We're part of the Devon Publishing Group, which is the holding company for Portal and Winn/Devon which does higher end prints. We also have Portal U.K.
GDA: What do you see next for Portal and for the industry?
TF: The character of the marketplace has changed. We used to pride ourselves on the thousands of small stores we did business with and now many of them are closing. I don't necessarily like it, but it's the way things are. More and more of our business is with large chains like Cost Plus and Bed Bath and Beyond.
GDA: Besides Portal, what do you give your time to?
TF: I have four children. I've also been going to Russia for the last 20 years, visiting Jewish refuseniks. I'm the only Catholic on the board of the Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal. It changed in 1991 when anyone could leave the Soviet Union who wanted to. So then I started going to Iran and to Baghdad, taking medicine to a small hospital.
GDA: How did you mark the company's golden anniversary?
TF: We went back and recreated some of the posters that we didn't have samples of and displayed them at our 50th anniversary celebration. It was amazing. We had about 400 people there, most of them younger than me, and some of them said they grew up with those posters.
