It's tough to be a public company if you can't get the public's attention.
Which is why Gene Jackson will be out of the road a lot in coming months, trying to raise the profile of his Mindenbased company, Kingdom Ventures Inc.
Along with the traditional brokerage house road show, Jackson, the company's president and chief executive officer, will be making presentations about Kingdom Ventures to a distinctly untraditional set of audiences folks who attend conventions of Christian retailing and groups involved in building church organizations.
In the long run, Jackson figures, the church-related organizations are likely to produce the kind of long-term, sock-itaway- for-the-grandkids investors his company is looking for.
But first, the investors whether Wall Street or Main Street will need to hear the story of Kingdom Ventures.
Jackson acknowledges that it's not a 30- second tale.
The company, which has been fully reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission for two years but issued a publicly traded common stock only at the start of 2003, describes itself a "media, marketing and merchandising" company for church organizations.
Here's how it works: Of the approximately 400,000 churches in the United States, Jackson said last week, an estimated 92 percent have fewer than 200 members.
A church that small often doesn't have the muscle to address challenges ranging from computer software to financing to fundraising.
Enter Kingdom Ventures, which wants to be an outsourced business-management arm for churches.
The "media" part of the "media, marketing and merchandising" tag Jackson applies to Kingdom Ventures comes from its acquisition earlier this month of the media properties of iExalt Inc., including the popular iExalt.com site.
iExalt.com includes services such as an on-line prayer meeting and Christian chat rooms.
Jackson figures the site, which his company can run at a modest cost, will generate an equally modest amount of revenue through banner ads.
More important, visitors to the Web site Kingdom Ventures estimates their number at 250,000 to 1 million a month learn about the company's retail and service ventures.
A big piece of the retail operation is Xtreme Notebooks Inc., a seller of notebook computers and projectors.
That division of Kingdom Ventures targets churches and faith-based organizations, helping them match hardware with the Christian software they want.
Some of the software, in turn, is sold through the company's Kingdom Gifts unit, which markets products ranging from candles and Biblical collectibles to jewelry and videos.
Yet another unit, Yahwear, sells clothing at Christian music festivals and through the Internet.
Much of the silkscreened and embroidered clothing is manufactured by Mr.
Roys, a Carson City company that Kingdom Ventures acquired last summer.
Its employees are part of the company's workforce of 17 in Douglas County and Carson City.
Just last week, Kingdom Ventures took another step when it created an alliance with Security Church Finance to provide financing services to small and medium-sized congregations.
For all the activity and all the press releases, however, few have paid much attention.
The shares, which have traded as low as 30 cents and as high as 90 cents on the OTC Bulletin Board, were bid at 37 cents last week but trading is almost nonexistent.
(Entities controlled by Jackson and his family hold a majority of the common shares.) "The stock has almost no eyeballs on it," Jackson acknowledged.
While the company hasn't released its financial results for its fiscal year that ended on Jan.
31, Jackson reported in mid-March that unaudited results show Kingdom Ventures' sales rose to $3.2 million in the year from $844,000 in 2001.
He said last week he expects the company will be close to break-even for the year.
In an SEC filing covering the first nine months of its fiscal year, Kingdom Ventures reported a loss of $11,000 on sales of $2.37 million.
That compares with a loss of $59,000 on sales of $432,253 in the comparable quarter a year earlier.
"We believe we will be significantly profitable this year," Jackson said last week.
The company continues to look for acquisitions particularly in areas where it can help churches with deal with technology issues.
While Jackson believes his company can line up financing for acquisitions, he also is paying attention to the need to develop a depth of management to handle more operations.
"We're putting the pieces together," he said.
"We've had to be lean enough to be profitable."
