Distributor’s Link Marks 30th Anniversary

John Wolz

In 1977, Leo Coar was a rep for companies selling in New York and noticed “all these companies could use the exposure” of a national fastener magazine. Coar was on the road making sales calls as a rep, so he recruited his sister-in-law, MaryAnn Marzocchi from Southern Screw, to help start a distribution-oriented magazine.

This year Distributor’s Link is marking its 30th anniversary.

Coar’s fastener history dates decades before Link and includes manufacturing and distribution in addition to being a rep. He started in the fastener industry in 1954 with Southern Screw Company.

Over the decades Link has developed its own style, with each issue having hundreds of pictures of people at fastener events. “We keep involved,” Coar emphasized.
“There is no bad news in Link,” Coar pointed out. “We publish good news for the fastener industry.” Bad news travels fast and as a quarterly magazine “people will already have heard about a bankruptcy.”

Link is “domestic oriented” with ads primarily from North American manufacturers and U.S.-based importers or master distributors.

“Distributors read it and relate to it,” Coar finds. “The formula has worked and we’ve stuck to it.”

At age 75, Coar still goes to work every day. “Four of us are busy all the time,” Coar said of his team of Tracey Lumia, Gayle Bohall and Marzocchi.

Coar knows his magazine’s future is in distributors reading Link. He wants advertisers to keep coming back in the next issue “for the good reason that they get a return. They get calls.”

Editor’s Note: The full article on Link will be published in an upcoming issue of FIN. Coar can be contacted at 4297 Corporate Square, Naples, FL 24104. Tel: 239 643-2713 or 800 356-1639 Fax 239 643-5220 E-mail: leojcoar@linkmagazine.com Web: linkmagazine.com
�2007 FastenerNews.com