Berrett-Koehler Publishers, BK for short, was founded in 1992, which makes this year their 25th anniversary! To commemorate the occasion, BK held an office party at their home base in Downtown Oakland and we were invited to join! If you’ve been following along with Giggle and Riot for awhile, you know we love any chance we get to escape the Sacramento heat and go visit our Bay Area photo booth clients!
Berrett-Koehler Publishers is a media company with a mission!
They are determined to change the world for the better.
Their mission? “Connecting People and Ideas to Create a World That Works For All.”
Their website will tell you the story of how they came to be, but a short narrative tells:
Berrett-Koehler was founded on “a deep sense of responsibility to administer the publishing company for the benefit of all of our ‘stakeholder’ groups—authors, customers, employees, suppliers and subcontractors, owners, and the societal and environmental communities in which we live and work” (a quote from our first catalog).
In 1991, Berrett-Koehler’s founder, Steve Piersanti, was leading Jossey-Bass, a California business book publisher owned by a big corporation in New York. Even though Jossey-Bass was highly profitable, one day Steve received a call from corporate headquarters ordering him to lay off more than 10 percent of the Jossey-Bass staff.
Steve refused to fire these people, so Steve was fired instead. Many Jossey-Bass community members were outraged. Steve’s phone at home rang off the hook with calls from authors, suppliers, and others encouraging Steve to start a new publishing company and offering book projects, credit, and other support.
One of our favorite things about this event was the HUGE props they had that related to books they’ve published!
Working with BK Publishers, one thing was very clear- they treat their employees and clients like family! We could not be more pleased that we were their “go-to” Bay Area photo booth company for this event!
Check out more of this amazing group’s anniversary party over at their album
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