Some leisure pursuits take your mind off business. This one makes Eric Kampmann think about his business better.
Another day, another trailhead.
As he has done many times in recent years, Eric Kampmann shoulders a backpack and heads out on the Appalachian Trail. The 59-year-old cofounder and president of Midpoint Trade Books has hiked every step of this fabled American pathway that crosses New Hampshire (161 miles), Vermont (149 miles), Massachusetts (90 miles), and his home state of Connecticut (52 miles). Today, an overcast Friday in late August, Kampmann is starting out in a new state, New Jersey, home to 73 miles of the famous hiking route. I've joined him to find out what's brought him here -- specifically, to the Appalachian Trail again -- and to learn what he meant when he told me on the phone that backpacking has done more than just improve his health, sense of perspective, and psychic balance.
Over and above that, Kampmann said, it's helped him design his business.
In the parlance of the trail, Kampmann is a section hiker, someone who pursues it in chunks, as opposed to that far-rarer breed of Appalachian Trail backpacker known as a "thru-hiker." Thru-hikers strive to complete all 2,168 miles of the route in a single grueling multimonth journey -- generally starting in early spring atop Springer Mountain in Georgia and pushing to reach the northern terminus, Maine's Mount Katahdin, before the onset of winter.
On this morning in the hilly, heavily forested northwest corner of New Jersey, Kampmann joins the trail heading southwest along the Kittatinny Ridge. Three 20-mile days would leave him still short of the Delaware Water Gap and the bridge into Pennsylvania. He'll hike those 60 miles later, probably in the fall. Today Kampmann wears a day pack. He's mapped out a 6-mile loop; I've got in mind enough questions for him, I think, to keep us busy till we get back.
The trail takes off at a slight incline under the welcome cover of oak and hickory trees, which intercept a gentle mist. The guidebook warns: "If you have not had any experience with this section of the AT, or if your feet are particularly sensitive, be prepared for a rocky path that will test your boots. The first two miles of this hike will be demanding on your feet and on your balance."
Kampmann is six feet tall and "a little over" 200 pounds. "But I'm not pregnant," he's quick to add. That's his euphemism for the paunch so characteristic of many middle-aged, desk-bound executives. Hiking helps keep him physically fit. Earlier in the summer, out west, he climbed Mount Shasta to 13,500 feet, not far from its 14,162-foot summit. A bandage on his left forearm covers a souvenir of that trip. Glissading down a snowfield, sliding on his backside in the chute of earlier descenders, he'd lost his grip on his ice ax -- and then a good bit of skin -- before he finally came to rest.
Eyes a bit ahead of his boots, Kampmann falls into a steady, surefooted stride. The path, as warned, turns rocky. As we walk he backtracks a half century, telling of summertime hikes with his father in the New Hampshire mountains near Squam Lake. In 1967, after graduating from Brown, and before enrolling at Stony Brook to earn a master's degree in English, Kampmann hiked alone for three weeks, completing most of the scenic and arduous New Hampshire stretch of the Appalachian Trail.
PACKING FOR PARADISE: Eric Kampmann's hiking gear has expanded to include a camera for taking landscape shots along the Appalachian Trail and a telescoping walking stick. And he always packs a Bible.
Years later, when he returned to the trail, it was like reuniting with an old friend. He was married by then, the father of three boys and a girl. And entrepreneurially wet behind the ears. After his first book-distribution company filed for bankruptcy, he'd regrouped and formed a small sales-and-marketing company and teamed up with National Book Network, another book distributor. In 1992, while attending a summer-camp reunion in New Hampshire, Kampmann took his three sons -- the youngest of whom, Arthur, had yet to turn five -- up nearby 4,802-foot Mount Moosilauke. Assessing his life from on high at a kind of watershed moment, at age 49, Kampmann recovered "something that was lost."
His initial return to hiking focused on the popular Granite State quest of "peak bagging" all 48 New Hampshire mountains of 4,000 feet or more. The next year, in honor of his 50th birthday, he came back to the area with his wife, Anne, and summited three 4,000-footers. Kampmann climbed others with friends and hiked solo to many peaks. "Any time I was anywhere near New Hampshire," he says, "I would find an excuse to do a mountain or two. Or seven."
Not yet trail savvy on those early trips, he packed too much. Meaning, of course, he carried too much. "Backpacking is an art form," he says, describing the need to carefully weigh the benefits of bringing along some article of clothing or bit of gear against the discomfort of lugging it mile after mile. "I don't think you get this by reading books, only by experience, by finding your minimum comfort level."
As it happened, precisely when he was learning the art of packing lighter -- and also braving the harsher challenges of winter hiking -- he began to devise a blueprint for his present business, Midpoint Trade Books. The company provides sales, marketing, and distribution services to some 150 small independent book publishers; last year it had revenues of $11 million. Hiking alone, he pondered how to best design his business, which he founded in 1996 with partners Chris Bell, Ron Freund, and Gail Kump.
"When we started Midpoint, my partners and I had four goals," Kampmann explains. "One: we didn't want to seek outside investors. We wanted to bootstrap the company and self-finance, which we were able to achieve. Two: we didn't want to create debt, which we were also able to do. Three: we wanted to create a high-level service company for our client publishers, to be directly involved with them ourselves rather than handing off responsibilities to hired hands. And four: we didn't want to marry the company. We all felt that we had lives and interests outside of the business that we needed to nurture for us to be good at the previous objective."
In Midpoint's Manhattan office you'll find, at most, Kampmann, Kump, and a single assistant. (Bell works out of a satellite office in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Freund is based in Kansas City, Kans., where the company's distribution center is located.) There's not even a secretary. Kampmann handles his own correspondence, makes his own photocopies, empties the trash. When the phone rings, he reaches for it. Midpoint has been as carefully pared down as the contents of his backpack -- and is better for it, Kampmann insists.
"I think a tremendous amount of management time generally gets taken up managing people internally," he says, explaining that he spends that time personally aiding clients -- and heading off potential problems. That frees him up for hiking days like this one. With a family at home and a business to tend, he's never seriously considered spending weeks on the trail.
The mist has changed to a light rain. Kampmann walks a bit farther, monitoring the turn in the weather. Then he stops, removes his pack, and dons a pair of Gore-Tex gaiters, which start at midshin and continue down to a protective boottop skirt.
