Bill Miller `81 loves product. He particularly loves making product

Bill Miller ’81
popularized brands
for Barnes & Noble,
The New York Times
and FAO Schwarz
Marketing Maven
By Geoff Gehman
Bill Miller ’81 loves product. He particularly loves making
Wilkes | Fall 2012
product more lovable to consumers across continents.
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Over three decades the merchandising expert has
popularized everything from clip-on lights for tablet
computers to baskets woven by Ugandan war widows.
Bill Miller, New York, N.Y.
B.S., Business Administration,Wilkes, 1981
Career: President of Galison Publishing LLC/Mudpuppy Press
Notable: Recently completed a consulting project marketing
archival photos for The New York Times.
Bill Miller ’81 is surrounded by the colorful products he
markets as president of Galison Publishing/Mudpuppy
Press, the latest chapter of his successful career.
Photos by Dan Z. Johnson
Favorite Wilkes Memories: Bradford Kinney’s communication and marketing class and lessons learned from Jane
Lampe-Groh, then assistant dean of student affairs, and
George Ralston, then dean of student affairs. “They gave me
a vision,” says Miller, “of a kinder, broader world.”
store of healthy products for Rodale Press, the organic-lifestyle
pioneer, to marketing LightWedge clip-on lights for the Nook
and its chief competitor, Amazon’s Kindle.
Miller’s splashiest consulting assignment came from The
New York Times. Asked to boost the sales and reputation of
the newspaper’s archival photographs, he suggested hiring
prominent designers as guest curators. Fashion superstar Vera
Wang was among the 10 tastemakers who chose 10 pictures
apiece. Celebrity cachet has helped boost sales of Times
Store photos a heady 12 percent, says Theresa DeRosa, the
newspaper’s director of creative services and merchandising.
She praises Miller as a remarkably skilled strategist: connected,
charismatic, calm in any crisis. A fan of his Barnes & Noble
innovations, she waited three years to work with him, finally
proposing a partnership when they sat together at a dinner party.
Miller missed the excitement of leading a creative team, a
daily duty for his husband, Talbot Logan, vice president of
wholesale initiatives and brand presentation for Ralph Lauren.
Miller filled this void in May when he became president
of Galison Publishing LLC/Mudpuppy Press. He likes the
company’s lineup of useful, fanciful items: a memo pad shaped
like a vintage telephone; a writer’s notebook with a photo of
the Chrysler Building, which he can see from the company’s
conference room. He especially likes the challenge of trying to
transform a well-known family business into a household name
under a new owner. In March the company was purchased by
the McEvoy Group, a San Francisco-based media company.
“My job is to instill a sense of pride and responsibility, to give
people a setting to shine,” says Miller, a member of Wilkes’ Board
of Trustees. Miller is eager to put his spin on items featuring
Babar and the Little Prince, new licensees and old superheroes
of children’s literature. He loves to cast novel roles for classic
characters, to make something as simple as a little black notebook
as flexible, and as important, as a little black dress.
“It’s not just a little black notebook; it can have all sorts of
designs that can express your lifestyle and your life,” says Miller.
“It all comes down to, ‘how do we use product to make our
everyday existence a little better?’ ”
Wilkes | Fall 2012
Last spring Miller began finding and fine tuning product as
president of Galison Publishing LLC/Mudpuppy Press, a supplier
of fine-art notecards, children’s games and journals for all ages.
Promoting items starring Van Gogh’s sunflowers and Babar the
elephant suits a marketing maven who has worked for the world’s
biggest bookseller and the world’s best-known toy store.
The native of Forty Fort, Pa., earned money for Wilkes by
unloading boxes and setting up store displays for his father, a
food broker for supermarket chains and mom & pop groceries.
Miller learned from his father to exceed customer demands and
meet deadlines—essential skills for a future branding boss.
Key lessons for his career also were learned at Wilkes. He
cites taking the communication and marketing class taught by
Bradford Kinney, professor of communication studies. Kinney’s
“great energy” inspired Miller to write for The Beacon and work
in the school’s public-relations office, where he learned about
marketing through media.
Miller later polished his skills while serving a pair of venerable
department-store chains, Hess’s and Macy’s. He graduated
from Macy’s renowned executive-training program. In 1989,
Miller joined FAO Schwarz, the famous toy store. He became
a quadruple threat, supervising stores outside Manhattan, the
company catalog, its Web site and its flagship store on Fifth
Avenue. Highlights included escorting Princess Diana and reaping
the publicity benefits of the 1988 movie Big, where Tom Hanks
dances to “Chopsticks” on the store’s giant floor piano.
Miller left in 2000, shortly after FAO Schwarz was sold. He
became president of Eziba.com, a three-year-old firm started by
an economist-entrepreneur to aid talented artisans in troubled
countries. Miller helped launch a museum-quality catalog that
compelled young consumers to buy goods online, a strategy
then in its infancy. He helped establish an exchange where the
sale of goods funded food and shelter. Eziba struggled to turn a
profit despite backing from Amazon.com and, in 2005, it sold
its assets to Overstock.com. The next year Miller became a vice
president at Amazon’s rival, Barnes & Noble. He monitored
gifts, cafes, product placement and product development.
Miller oversaw developing covers and lights for the Nook,
Barnes & Noble’s tablet computer. He commissioned his friend,
home-décor specialist Jonathan Adler, to design the company’s
first vase. It was his idea to have back-to-school journals and
bags decorated by college students, an idea that became a
boon for the company’s campus bookstores. He also brokered
a partnership with FEED Projects, co-founded by former first
daughter Lauren Bush, to provide food and nutrients to children
in impoverished countries. Miller remains on FEED’s board.
In 2009 he left Barnes & Noble to become a full-time
consultant. His projects ranged from developing an online
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