Reunions: A New School of Thought : Business: Firms are taking up the job of organizing the get-togethers, something alumni don’t have time for these days.
The letter arrives. It’s from your old schoolmates of 20 years ago. There’s going to be a class reunion at some hotel.
It’s only $60, so you write out a check and send it in. And Steve and Erna Drucker get a little bit richer.
For it’s not Vicki the cheerleader or Debbie the class secretary who’s organizing this do. It’s the Druckers, their computer and their 10 full-time employees in Orange.
By year’s end, more than $2.25 million will have flowed through their firm, Great Reunions Inc. In return, 34,000 former jocks, car clubbers, class presidents and nerds will munch chicken dinners and dance to the music of their teens.
Professional reunion firms have been cropping up in metropolitan areas all over the country during the past decade, and many wither and die, some are doing well.
At least five such business operate in Orange County and several others in Los Angeles and Riverside areas.
“This is the best business I’ve ever been in,” said Drucker. “It is a money machine.” He had been a certified public accountant, then started a toxic-waste disposal service. “Toxic waste was making me rich, but it was giving me ulcers. You can’t believe the aggravation in that work.”
When he attended the 25th reunion of his high school on Long Island in 1982, the idea blossomed. “It had been put together pretty hastily and was really disorganized,” he said. “We all had a lot of fun, but I got to thinking that with everybody working now, people would love to have someone take all this off their hands.”
Now Drucker points to his books to show he was right. He claims his is the largest and most successful such company in the nation.
“There is just no doubt in my mind that we are a business because of the rise of the two-income family,” he said. “Organizing reunions is something women used to do. They headed all the committees. And when they started going into the work force, there wasn’t anyone around to take over.”
Adopting the tactic tour companies have long employed, reunion companies guarantee large groups of customers in exchange for large discounts from hotels, caterers and suppliers. With more than 400 high schools in Orange and Los Angeles counties alone, most area hotels are hosting one or more reunions every Saturday night from now through mid-September.
“We bring a hotel 20 or 30 reunions a year, and they are going to be a lot more flexible with us than with a volunteer committee that is coming once and will never be back,” Drucker said.
That keeps the ticket price within the $50-to-$65 range that seems to maximize attendance.
Alumni of the bigger, older Los Angeles and Orange county schools are more willing to pay that much than in other Southern California areas, said Joe Gutierrez, a former Great Reunions employee who owns High School Reunions Co. in Orange.
“If the price goes much higher, people won’t come,” said Sonny Reeder, president of Reunions Are Magical in Anaheim. Some reunions run more for themed parties or cruises, but they are few.
Attendance is crucial, for part of the companies’ service is to assume the risk of a small turnout. With rare exceptions, they must plop down deposits and guarantee to pay for a minimum number of dinners.
“At the peak of the season, we’ll have $50,000 to $70,000 out in deposits at hotels,” said Drucker. And that peak usually is six months before the ticket money starts coming in.
“The hotels generally get $6 to $8 per person as a deposit,” said Reeder, “and we also have to pay out deposits to hold photographers, printers, decorations, the disc jockeys. . . . It isn’t cheap.”
So as part of the service, reunion organizers help find “lost” alumni in order to maximize attendance. Researchers scan voter and property rolls in the major Southern California counties. It takes about 40 hours of research time to assemble the initial list of graduates.
Organizers also pay close attention to reunion trends. They’ve concluded that:
* Attendance is usually poor at five-year reunions. The alums are still in college or struggling at new jobs. “When we get a call asking us to do one, we suggest they have a nice picnic at a local park,” said Erna Drucker.
* Attendance is just as bad at 15-year reunions. “That’s a time of flux in most people’s lives,” Erna Drucker said. “With all the divorces, job changes and other turmoil going on, a reunion is that last thing most want to worry about.”
* Ten-year reunions are unpredictable, because money can be tight for families at that stage. “But attendance typically is highest at the 10-year reunion, because a lot of people are still around the area and interested in what their old classmates are doing,” Steve Drucker said.
* The 20-year reunion is when attendance stabilizes and remains strong through the 40th. After that, making it to the reunion can be difficult.
* August is the peak month for reunions in Southern California. Great Reunions is staging 44 separate events then. On Aug. 29, company-produced reunions will be going on in locales from Ventura to the Antelope Valley and to Orange County.
* Middle-income schools have the biggest reunion turnouts. “The graduates of poor and rich schools usually get quite widely scattered for job and social reasons,” Steve Drucker said. “And the people from wealthy schools generally all want to be chiefs, so nobody does the work that has to be done to make it a successful reunion.”
* Ironically, the alma mater make the worst location for a reunion. “When you try to get nostalgic and go back to the old school, you usually find out that the neighborhood has gone downhill or the gym is a lot rattier than you remember, and everyone gripes about paying $50 to go to a sock hop. It just doesn’t work,” Steve Drucker said.
As a bonus, the business seems to be fairly recession-proof, despite lagging revenues, organizers say. Checks are coming in more slowly than in boom times.
“People are procrastinating,” said Reeder. “They’ll come to their reunion, but this year they’re waiting as long as they can to write those checks.”
