Bud Plant Inc.

In 1968 he co-founded Seven Sons Comic Shop with five friends, John Barrett, Jim Buser, Mike Nolan, Frank Scadina, and Tom Tallmon, in San Jose.

Scadina canceled at the last minute and Nolan recruited his co-worker Larry Strawther, a fellow sportswriter at the Redwood City Tribune, as a replacement.

(Strawther would later go on to be a writer-producer on TV shows like Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Night Court, and MXC: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.)

The foursome traveled around the country in Barrett's pick-up tuck with a shell, attending cons in Oklahoma City, Cincinnati, New York and Houston;.

In late 1973 Seuling called Plant to inform him that he had just cut a deal to ship Archie, DC, Marvel, and Warren comic books from a new distribution center in Sparta, Illinois.

As part of his retailing enterprise Comics & Comix (see below), in 1974 Plant co-published one issue of the underground/sword and sorcery hybrid Barbarian Killer Funnies; moving from there to the similarly themed The First Kingdom, written and illustrated by Jack Katz.

[citation needed] In the early 1980s Plant supplied product to Destiny Distributors, a sub-distributor based in Seattle and Vancouver, started by Phil Pankow (which was acquired by Diamond in 1990).

[18] Then in April 2012 (after failing to find a buyer) he announced plans to downsize (eliminating print catalogs) but continue operations.

He also hired back several long-time employees, including Todd Wulf and LaDonna Padgett, who had been with him since before the wholesale business sold to Diamond in 1988.

The company had a staff of seven full-time employees, including Wulf and Padgett,[citation needed] and remained in the same warehouse of 34 years.