The Barnhart Group — Trumpeting Family Business
Incredibly, the company has just 18 full-time employees. Barnhart gets the maximum value out of his force (“we’re small, but mighty”) by offering design-to-destination capabilities. The single-source mantra keeps customers under one roof, and coming back.
“We won’t take a client who just wants the marketing agency to design a Website,” Barnhart says. “We want everything—printing, mailing, Websites, commercial photography. I’m not going to tie up our graphic artists, who are laying out catalogs that generate $70,000 apiece, for a $6,000 Website.”
Most of Barnhart’s capex is currently being aimed at fortifying the photography business, but the company did shell out $225,000 not long ago for a Theisen & Bonitz collator from MBO America. In the fall of 2006, Barnhart went computer-to-plate (CTP) with the acquisition of a four-up Fujifilm thermal Dart 4300S platesetter running Brillia HD thermal plates.
As for the musician in Barnhart, he hasn’t completely packed away his trumpet or given up involvement in the entertainment business. He has a club band that does gigs for fun, but occasionally makes trips with some performers.
Barnhart treasures a collection of more than 4,000 photos of playing onstage with various artists; in recent years the Country Music Hall of Fame purchased more than 600 items from his personal collection.
Barnhart also books acts and negotiates contracts for some music and TV personalities. He is currently managing Donna Douglas, best known for her role as Elly May on “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Douglas does speaking engagements at churches, an occasional TV appearance and autograph/memorabilia shows. Barnhart also has appeared alongside such Hollywood stars as Burt Reynolds and Lee Majors, as well as nearly every living country music personality, pre-1999.
He also dabbles in land development. All of this from someone who retired from touring after 20-plus years in the music business.
