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In a land where DVDs are as commonplace as
snowfall, the family run Moon Valley Media continues to bring in a bundle of business on tape, with no signs of slowing down.
Founded in 1981 by Mark Bruno to handle the manufacturing needs of a liturgical company Mark's father owned, Moon Valley,
while retaining big-time religious publishing accounts (such as Oregon Catholic Press), has since branched out (largely by
word-of-mouth) to the local music scene and other spoken word segments, such as motivational speaking, training, promotions,
and myriad other specialty markets.
"Turnkey" and "one-stop shop" may be overused buzzwords, but Moon
Valley is also living proof that the advantage of integration is real. The company offers its clients a full complement of
in-house services, including copy writing, flat-rate licensed music, studio recording, graphic design, photo development,
printing of booklets, J-cards and lyric sheets, custom tape loading, CD-R duplication, and fulfillment.
What's more, these services -- and management of any out-sourced
services a client may need (such as video or replicated CDs) -- are extended to any size, "as is the case with many people
who are trying to buy product -- if you don't order a minimum quantity, then a lot of duplicators don't want to deal with
you, because you're not going to make that much money on it, and it's not worth the hassle," Moon Valley Media points out.
"We've tried to run our business on the philosophy
that we try to give everybody what they need at a price that will fit their budget. So when someone comes to us and says,
'we only need 100 of these, but boy we really feel like it's going to do well, and we'll stick with you if you do a good job...,'
and that's happened with a ton of our clients -- we pay attention to them when nobody else does. It's the same [situation] with the printing companies doing J-cards or CD inserts --
they don't want to touch anything under 2000 (units)," Mark concurs.
All this is not to say the duplicator turns away the big fish --
satisfied customers include Purina Mills, for which Moon Valley completed a 75,000-piece order.
"If they say, 'we want you to work through the night
to get the job done,' they know that we're going to do whatever we have to do to make them happy. We don't have an extremely
large staff, with everything being so automated," according to Mark. "But, if we get a job for 75,000 pieces, we've got a
list of phone numbers of people we call, and we load the place up, and get the job out."
Glad To Meet Ya
The Bruno's are genuinely enthused about meeting clients and catching
a glimpse of the numerous industries that are turning to tape. A flagship client is motivational speaker Robert Kiyosaki,
author of the New York Times bestseller Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
"He's a nice guy -- he invented the Velcro surfer wallet," Mark shares,
adding that when he and Kiyosaki first met, the author was only looking for a short run. "They came to us and said, 'We've
tried the [major duplicator] route, but we're looking for personal attention.' Here they can call up, and ask, 'how's progress,'
and get an answer right away."
Some of the most well-known authors in the show
horse industry have also found a home at Moon Valley for radio programs and books-on-tape.
"There's a local studio here called Lambchop's Recording Studio," Mark
says. "Rick Lamb, the owner, also has a project called The Horse Show, which is a weekly syndicated radio show that goes out
to about 80 radio stations across the country. And it's an hour and a half long program on the horse industry: what's going
on, interviews with all the top names in the industry. So we do that for him. A spin-off of that particular project," he continues,
"is the Horse Show Audio Library. What [Lamb] has done is establish relationships with all of these people who write books
on horses and transfer them onto audiocassette. We currently have seven projects that we make, and he just keeps adding to
it, because everybody's just jumping on the bandwagon."
Indeed, word about cassette (and Moon Valley) has spread fast in the
horse industry.
"One of the biggest names in the horse industry is John Lyons," Mark
adds. "He started with The Horse Show a couple of months ago -- we've already done three projects for him."
Lyons, in turn, publishes a magazine with over 100,000 subscribers --
so one can see how niche markets can balloon to big numbers for the duplicator.
Coincidentally, horses factor in to the warm-and-friendly air of Moon
Valley's office with a rocking horse nestled right past the front door.
"Clients can come in with their kids and the kids will hop on the rocking
horse, and have a soda -- it's very warm and friendly here. We treat everybody that way here."
In the music world, cassette still rocks for the area's local talent.
"A lot of the local musicians, they're starting musicians (playing)
at the Starbucks, and they don't buy huge quantities of product," Mark notes. "But they're consistent enough in their purchasing
to where they're still beneficial clients. They can't afford CDs yet, even in small run, and they're still selling tapes,
so they figure as long as they're selling cassettes, they'll keep on buying them."
It Must Be Nice!
As far as outsourcing
work themselves, Moon Valley also does video work. The Brunos -- who perspicaciously pick up each other's conversational thread
-- insist that life in the Phoenix duplication scene is competitive, but friendly and symbiotic.
Mark: "A lot of the in-cassette duplicators
in town buy their pre-loads here and they can get them the same day or the next day. We have a really good working relationship
with the other duplicators in town. We have a policy to never try to take clients from someone else if the job's brokered
through us.
"We know some companies
that really specialize in spoken word, period. They run their machines at 128:1 and they can't get the quality that some music
clients want, so they bring the job over here and we'll run it at 32: 1. We run on a philosophy that we can't burn bridges
in this industry because it's not a huge industry -- everyone knows what everyone else is doing to the point where we've had
other duplicators call us up and say, 'we know so-and-so coming over to your shop, and I'd sure be careful, because this is
what happened here.' So everyone's real nice."
CALL 1-800-TAPES50 or 602-870-3987
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