06/ 17/ 2004
El Clasificado
Los Angeles
Martha de la Torre, founder and publisher
www.elclasificado.com
For 16 years, El Clasificado (the "company") has been reaching the Latino community with a weekly free Spanish-language publication. Readers pick up the publication at more than 3,200 distribution points in the Southern California area. Currently, it is the nation's second largest free Spanish language weekly publication.
On being a small-business owner: Martha de la Torre loves to help people. The best thing about her position as owner of El Claisificado is being able to create jobs and careers, especially for young people in inner cities. "It is very satisfying to see someone come in at an entry-level position and with the right guidance and opportunity flourish to leadership roles that in turn help the company grow, and thus create more job opportunities and wealth for all," she says.
On technology: Technology has played a huge role at the publication from day one. "When desktop publishing was introduced in the late 80s, it allowed us to produce El Clasificado with an investment of less than $30,000," says de la Toree. "At the time, other similar publications at the time were being produced with equipment that cost the hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Thanks to technology, El Clasificado has been able to better support its advertisers, allowing them to run ads segmented by the location of the reader. And they're able to do it all without too many price hikes.
"We pride ourselves in not increasing customer prices frequently," says de la Torre. "Technology continually enables us to grow our sales by increasing market share through productivity without a parallel production cost increase or price increase to our customers."
