SJR Productions Biography

It started 20 years ago, in 1986. I was working in a booth at Comdex selling disk duplication, and up walked Pat Sullivan, founder of ACT!. He said he had a new software product and he was going to need thousands of disks replicated. How wonderful, I said, I’ll be happy to quote you. But internally, I rolled my eyes thinking yeah, right, buddy, how many times had I heard that before! But by God, he was right; he ended up needing tens of thousands of disks, as ACT! created a new category of essential applications – contact management.

Soon after Comdex I quit my job, after the company I worked for missed too many deadlines, vowing to do it myself, seeing as all they really did was broker everything out – and I knew I could do a better job. Fortunately, I was living in Dallas at the time, home base of ACT!. So off I went on my own, calling on Pat and Mike (Muhney), founders of ACT!, who became my first customer. I ended up sourcing the original binders, boxes, disks, labels, envelopes (remember those 5 ¼” disks and their tyvek envelopes?). I even found a rehabilitation center close to my house to put the whole kit n caboodle together. I worked with them months before the actual product release and attended the ceremonial dinner kicking off the product. There were 13 of us there, several of which were spouses and investors, so there were really relatively few of us who actually had a hand in producing the product. I was feted and toasted for my hard work and soon after offered a job…..which I politely refused. I continue to wonder if I should have chosen that path and ended up a millionaire when ACT! got sold to Symantec. But truly I have no regrets…..as they say in baseball, ACT! has been berry berry good to me!

For years, I provided packaging services for ACT!, my contribution continuing to dwindle as ACT! became more popular, finally needing a full time production manager. He eventually ended up buying just the sleeves from me – I think mostly out of a mixture of loyalty and pity. But I still did fine, just on the sleeves, ACT! was such a growing concern.

I kept busy doing varied marketing projects for hardware and software companies. A job with Prodigy (remember them?) which led to Fuji asking me to produce a coupon book to put in their 3/5” disk boxes. At the same time, I met my would be husband, George Shearer, designer extraordinaire (he does all design for the AddOn Store – web sites, catalogs, email blasts) and our relationship in love and work was soon inseparable. Creating 100,000 books for Fuji opened my eyes to the possibility of “in box coupon books” for everyone I could think of, so off we went, creating books for Suncom, Lotus, Symantec and – you guessed it – ACT!.

Then in 1992, George and I took 6 months off and went to Europe where a sometime great and sometime a bit tiring trip was had by all. When we got back, I was looking for work and beginning to despair. I thought my 6 month hiatus was probably the stupidest thing I’d ever done – I’d never work again, my career was over, what had I done…….things did not look good, I was scared.

And miracles of all miracles, the phone rang. It was Greg Head, then product manager for ACT!, asking if I’d like to produce a catalog of AddOn products for ACT!. Did I ever!! They had so many folks wanting to put advertising in their box that Greg felt it needed to be organized. That was the beginning of a beautiful path – in box catalogs. Soon after, at a party at a mutual friends house, I met Dee White, my soon to be best friend and employee. Dee has been an integral part of SJR for almost 15 years now, providing such valuable input that she has become a partner in the business. Not too many years later, my beautiful neice Sybil grew up and turned into a sharp cookie. Sybil now runs most day to day operations, I couldn’t imagine running the business without her.

SJR produced over 2 dozen in box catalog for ACT!, thru all its iterations and owners. During the years, we took on more catalog projects for GoldMine, Visioneer, Paper Direct, Visusal Café and many more. GoldMine is a funny side story.

GoldMine approached me to do an inbox catalog for them similar to ACT! back in the early 90’s. I went to Greg Head at ACT! and asked if he had a problem with that - and yes, by golly, he did. I was on the inside and knew of product forecasts and sales, new releases and builds. I was privy to many secrets he felt would be in conflict if I were to do the same for their main competitor. So I told GoldMine no and walked away.

As the years went by, ACT! got sold to Symantec, Greg Head eventually quit (and started working for Pat again at Saleslogix), and one of many new guys took his place. About that time, GoldMine found me and asked me again – at another Comdex in 1997. I had no one I needed to ask permission of anymore, no one really cared, so of course, I jumped at the chance and started creating GoldMine AddOn catalogs. A couple years later, GoldMine asked me to create an online store for their AddOns, and with their support, we opened the GoldMine AddOn Store in 1999, turning actaddons.com into a store soon there after.

Then, wouldn’t you know it, Pat bought back ACT!, and who was I now reporting to? Greg Head. He graciously never said anything about my relationship with GoldMine and continued to support me until the day he severed our ties, so other than that bitter episode, I have nothing but gratitude for him.

Anyway, back to the ACT! journey. The store was under way, catalogs were flowing, the ACT! family was home with Pat and Mike again after years of neglect at Symantec and all was well with the world. But then came Sage, the behemoth company that bought out Pat and Mike, with both of them walking out the door within months. Times had changed. ACT! was no longer the darling of a few dedicated souls, but now just another fish in a huge pond. People left, sales dropped, attitudes plummeted. But ACT! was and still is such a strong brand that it continues to survive.

However, the writing was on the wall for The AddOn Store. It seems one of the first thing any new owner ever seems to do is think “how can I make money on my installed base”. AddOns was one obvious answer. In came the phone call….” Sharon, I don’t want to alarm you, (yeah, right!) but we are either going to come up with a store on our own or find a partner to run one for us". My obvious answer was “choose me”! I offered to split the revenue 50/50 for any growth beyond the level I’d already achieved, thinking they’d put new marketing efforts in, raise the level and we’d both be happy. But that didn’t happen. Sales stayed the same and they didn’t see much profit. So the phone rang again. I was told with the dreaded ACT! 2005 (v7), Sage was going to start their own ACT! AddOn eStore, so they would be removing my link and see ya later, bye. Oh and by the way, they would be doing their own catalogs from now on as well, thank you very much.

At the last official Sage conference I was allowed to go to several years ago, Greg presented me with a lifetime achievement award, a nice marble plaque looking suspiciously like a tombstone. It was pretty much thanks for all your hard work, now don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

That same month, GoldMine got new owners and made the same decision, to drop our link, do away with the catalogs and sever any relationship they had with SJR and the AddOn Store. Just to put icing on the cake, QuickBooks let us know the AddOn catalog we had just done for them was going to be the only one, that there would be no more coming. Wow, was it a bad month!

But instead of quietly sinking into the background, The AddOn Store has continued to thrive. ACT! only sells 2005 and now 2006 AddOns and there a still thousands of ACT! 6.0 and earlier users that we continue to serve – with many products only available at our Store. We’ve recently delved into the Outlook world and are soon coming out with a QuickBooks AddOn Store, so we’re looking to expand our base and not have all our eggs in the very dysfunctional ACT! basket.

With the help of our loyal customers and vendors, we’ve managed to stay in business, even with Sage as competition, but I must admit, loosing that link from the ACT! home page was a definite blow.

To continue to grow, we’re retuning to our roots, producing catalogs again. In the past, we were fortunate to have the luxury of having customers sent to us. That is now gone, so we realize we need to go out and find new ACT!/GoldMine/Outlook & QuickBooks users. So we’re going to start advertising, in an attempt to find new customers and let them know how these AddOns can change their life!

And this is where I need to ask for your help. There is such a vast array of possibilities for advertising and we don’t know which make the most sense. Can you help steer us in the right direction? We want to know what industry you’re in, what magazines, newsletters or websites you read, so we can put our efforts there. You are part of our loyal, large base of customers, but we really don’t know much about you. Please help us grow and thrive by letting us know how you use ACT! so we can find others like you. I promise this information is for our internal use only – we would never sell your name, address or demographics to anyone. This is just so we can use our advertising dollars wisely by figuring out who you – our customer – are. Please click here to take this short online survey and send us your comments/suggestions. We know AddOns and with your continued support, we aren’t about to go away!

Oh, and please, tell a friend about The AddOn Store.

Sharon Randall
Founder, The AddOn Store