Coming from a sales background with
other B2B publications, when I
started Western Business Publishing
on the 1st Oct 1991 I saw Product Review as
an advertising-only journal.
The first few months after the company
was formed were spent travelling all over the
country, explaining to companies my ideas
for the product. People seemed to like the
notion, it was very simple really, and the first
issue was soon up and running and
scheduled for launch in February 1992.
It was just me working on my own from
home. I converted one of the bedrooms and I
had a part time secretary, but that was it – a
very small ship.
Production over the years has changed so
much, but in those early days we were using
type setters and reprographic houses to
produce films for the printers. I can
remember going to see the first issue off the
press. I was absolutely delighted with it and,
importantly, the market seemed to like it too.

At the time, the dear old reader enquiry card
was key. Everyone was looking for hundreds
of enquiries and I knew that if Product
Review was to succeed, it had to start
producing them. Fortunately for me, it did,
and the magazine went from strength to
strength. For the first year we kept it
quarterly, but the issues increased in size.

One day I had a chance encounter with a
gentleman called Karl Lacy, a former editor.
He suggested I should introduce editorial into
the journal. We developed a formula and Karl
subsequently became the journal’s first editor.

Once Karl was onboard and we started to
expand further it was no longer feasible to
work from home and we moved into office
accommodation. Karl started getting the
press releases in and writing the editorial
while I was doing the sales. It was at this
point that we started dropping the quarter
and half page panels from the original
Product Review design and started
developing the format that IP&E is today
with standard quarter, half and A4 page
advertisements.

Initially, the editorial was purely product
based. However, by the time Karl handed
over the editorship to Ian Clay in 1997,
feature length articles had become a regular
addition, the magazine started to be
produced six times a year and we started to
introduce supplements and yearbooks. The
sales team too was expanded.

Bearing in mind the recession of the early
1990s – in particular Black Wednesday in
September 1992 when interest rates briefly
hit 15% – I certainly had a few moments when I wondered what I was doing
launching a company and a magazine in
such uncertain times.

However, although business confidence
was very low, companies realised that they
still needed to promote themselves. My
overheads at the time were low, so perhaps I
was able to come up with a more competitive
offer. For what ever reason, people liked the
magazine and realised that it did what it said
on the tin.

Several of IP&E’s competitors from the
early days are no longer around, yet IP&E
continues to thrive and I think there are
several key reasons for this. The strength of
any B2B journal lies in its circulation and
database and we have always invested heavily
in both. From a readers point of view, I think
IP&E is a well produced, appealing journal.

I also think that, latterly, it is due to the
quality of the editorial and the quality of the
sales team that we have. From a staffing
point of view, we’re very fortunate in that
many of the staff have worked for us for a
number of years and produce a good team
effort which some of the other journals have
not managed to compete with. I think that’s
why we’re probably the leading industrial
product journal today.

The growth in the use of the internet
prompted speculation in some quarters that
it would be the end for newspapers and
consumer and B2B magazines. My own
feeling is that people still want to see a
magazine. They want to touch it and to be
able to pick it up and put it down when they
want to.

Another very important point – which I
think a lot of people miss – is that many
engineers still do not have access to the
internet at work. My personal feeling, when
looking in newsagents, is that there are more
and more magazines launching all the time
which sort of goes against what people
thought would happen.

The success of IP&E has resulted in the
development of other magazines and a series
of regional health and safety exhibitions and,
looking ahead, I think the possibility of
expansion is still there. If you can have a
good paper-based product with good
electronic media supporting it, I think you
have a winning formula. We’re just
introducing a totally new website for IP&E
and I see no reason why we can’t continue to
expand.

I think that as far as the overall market is
concerned you have to keep investing in all
areas – staff, circulation, website – to expand
your product and stay ahead of your
competitors. There is always business out
there. One just has to go and find it and keep
coming up with new ideas.

Does the idea of early retirement interest
me? No, certainly not.