Eric Gonsher sells maximum "exposure" to his clients.
And he means it.
Mike Turner, of Home Repairs in Lawrence, installs a bathroom advertisement for Eric Gonsher, president and founder of E.L. Bailer Indoor Advertising, in the men's room of Jack Flanigan's Bar and Grill, 806 W. 24th St. Gonsher, a Kansas University junior from Overland Park, built the bathroom-billboards concept for his Media Sales Strategy class at KU. Today he's landed $6,000 in contracts and hopes to be making $25,000 by year's end.
"It's starting to pick up pretty big," said Gonsher, who founded E.L. Bailer Indoor Advertising six months ago. "At first, people think the advertising isn't the best idea, but people are starting to catch on. The location is good. You get a lot of exposure, and the best thing is the captive audience: You have to be there."
His business, literally, is in the toilet.
Gonsher, a Kansas University junior, is busy selling advertising space on walls and in stalls of bars, restaurants and other hangouts in Lawrence.
Each of his indoor billboards feature four ad spots, with each spot available for a monthly fee ranging from $9 to $29. He said he's already landed more than $6,000 in contracts.
Just last fall, the company was little more than a concept for Gonsher's class project in Media Sales Strategy at KU. Then he had to "sell" it to his teacher, Diane O'Byrne.
No dollars changed hands, but something clicked.
"He came in, right off the bat, and he had something else no one had: He was selling me the backs of bathroom stalls," said O'Byrne, a visiting lecturer and owner of Competitive Resources, a Mission Hills company that creates sales strategies for businesses. "Eric's was so well-done, I lost sight of the fact that this was an imaginary exercise. I was ready to buy."
Such indoor advertising is a growing industry, said Tony Jacobson, vice president for AJ Indoor in Minneapolis, Minn., the country's largest provider of indoor billboards.
Jacobson said that AJ Indoor entered the Lawrence market about 10 years ago, but backed out to pursue larger areas. Today the company has nearly 5,000 locations in 62 cities, from Los Angeles to New York.
Its sales topped $4 million in 1999, he said, with annual revenues increasing anywhere from 25 percent to 50 percent a year. It puts tobacco ads above urinals and Pampers ads above baby-changing stations.
"Everybody's chasing the same thing," said Jacobson, who chairs the Indoor Billboard Network. "Indoor (advertising) is very duplicable. There's new competition everyday."
E.L. Bailer isn't Gonsher's first business.
In 1995 he started Sunny Day Lawn Care in Overland Park, and within three years had 100 customers and annual sales of $28,000.
He sold the place in 1998 for $15,000, then moved on to Lawrence to study business administration at KU.
Today, he buys frames from a supplier in Wisconsin and subcontracts for photography and graphic design. He pays bars to put the billboards in their bathrooms.
Even with such costs, Gonsher figures he can "net" $25,000 this year.
"There's a lot of potential in what I'm doing," the 21-year-old said. "I could make a pretty good living."
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