Great Courses sees major jump in profits

For the last 20 years, a company called The Great Courses has sold recorded lectures to an adult audience eager to brush up on humanities and sciences. Originally called The Teaching Company, Tom Rollins started the company on the idea of finding the most charismatic college professors and having them tape college-level courses for the adult-education market.
The customer demographic is made up of mostly older professionals with successful careers who see the liberal arts as a life-changing experience. The company markets deftly to that hunger and claims to have identified the very best of the country’s more than half-million college professors.
According to a recent article in the City Journal, “Company recruiters sit in on classes of professors who have won awards or been recognized for their teaching; the most promising are invited to the Great Courses headquarters to record an audition lecture. That recording then goes to the company’s most valued customers. If enough of them like it, the company asks the professor to create a lecture course.”
Brentwood Associates, a leading consumer brand private equity firm based in Los Angeles, acquired a majority stake of the Great Courses in 2006, spotting a thriving company with huge growth potential. “The foundation that Rollins created was unlike anything we’d seen,” says Brentwood Associates partner Eric Reiter. “He was a brilliant entrepreneur, building the company brick by brick through rigorous testing. Few businesses have such a passionate customer base. Nine out of ten people on the street have never heard of it, but nine of out ten, upon learning about the product, want it.”
Profits for the Great Courses have doubled since 2006, thanks to major investments in advertising. Forbes magazing recently reported the company’s annual sales as $110 million.