Since 1995, we at Our Town have been bringing residents and local businesses together with our direct-mail advertising newsletters.
So, who’s behind this operation?
The two of us, Sandy and Mark Lipten, started Our Town at our kitchen table in 1995…
…with an idea, high hopes, and a lot less cash in the bank than the experts advise!
Our kids, then 6 and 8, helped hand-label our first few monthly mailings of 10,000 issues. Believe it or not, they remember it fondly! And they remember the excitement when, the second month in business, our issue had to be expanded from 8 to 12 pages. It seemed like big stuff at the time!
Now, we publish hundreds of pages, mailing 87,500 issues monthly (a machine does the labeling now, thank goodness!).
But we’re still a mom-and-pop operation.
With our small team, which includes…
- Jennifer (customer service)
- Kim (graphic design)
- Joe (printing and bindery)
…we do everything right here in our office at the border of Winter Park and Oviedo.
Every month, the five of us put out seven editions of Our Town.
We and our employees design the ads, confirm and reconfirm with advertisers, lay out the pages, write the Community Notes, prep the pages for press, print issues, label them, load them up, and take them to the post office.
A live human being answers our phone, Monday through Friday, from 8:30 in the morning until 5 p.m.
Behind every single word or image on every page, there’s somebody who really cares about what you’re seeing there.
So, how does our hands-on approach benefit you, if you’re thinking of advertising?
Because we run Our Town as a reflection of who we are…and we are people who really don’t like it when people pressure us to buy things! This influences our whole business model.
Our focus is not on selling ads, but rather on good service and the most efficient operation possible, to keep prices low for the people who choose to advertise.
We don’t ever try to push or convince anybody to advertise.
In fact, we don’t even have a salesperson, and our employees know that we don’t ever want them to try to “upsell” anybody who calls.
We just strive to provide good value and let our quality and prices do the selling.
Without spending money to pay sales reps or telemarketers, we can keep our rates low.
And without spending time and energy on selling, we can focus on putting out a reliable and attractive publication to serve as many people as we can:
- the businesses who advertise in Our Town
- the residents who read Our Town
- and the community groups who run free announcements in our Community Notes.
From what we’ve heard during the last 14 years, Our Town is a trusted source of information for many, many readers.
Ask around — many people love getting Our Town. We hope you do, too!
Your publishers,
Mark Lipten and Sandy Bailey Lipten
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