London-based Richard Londesborough has clients in 130 countries.

London-based Richard Londesborough founded Business Monitor International while still in his early 20s, after graduating from Exeter University and just one year as foreign correspondent. He admits, "While knowing nothing about publishing, business or running a company, we plunged into becoming newsletter publishers."

How did they survive the early years? "Short answer: by the seat of our pants. Jonathan Feroze (co-founder, joint-CEO) and I first met in Mexico when working as editors producing a weekly supplement for the Mexico City News for just over a year. We also did some stringing for the news agencies and London press. We knew how to write decent copy, but the rest, frankly, was a voyage of discovery.

"We returned to London in 1984, and the first title we launched was Latin America Monitor, five monthly newsletters on the politics and economics of the region, and still going strong today. We spent 90 percent of our time writing and producing the newsletters, and 10 percent on marketing (and much of that was stuffing our own mail shots before someone told us about mailing houses)," Richard says.

"After a few months, we realized that word-of-mouth was not a viable marketing strategy, so we knuckled down and learnt the art and science of direct mail (a life-saver), firstly for the U.K. market and then for the rest of the world."

Followed the new emerging markets

"Once we had mastered that and developed more in-depth ancillary reports on Latin American countries, we decided to diversify when the term 'emerging markets' came into vogue around 1990," Richard says. "During the 1990s, we expanded to cover Asia, the Middle East, East and Central Europe, and Africa. Staff numbers grew from six to around 40 during that decade, and we became a corporate business rather than a small bunch of graduates inventing our own jobs."

Marketing

Asked about his marketing practices, Richard says, "The great joy of international marketing is that, in my view, you can very successfully market worldwide from one office--London in our case--and that's what we still do today. We contract print and mailing services from all over the world, and our London marketing staff speak at least 10 languages, but most DM packages are in English and one control template fits all countries (with regional and country variations).

"We learnt much of our marketing skills from other publishers and NEPA/SIPA. And yet, I find U.S. publishers, in particular, are constantly baffled that we have subscribers and clients in more than 130 countries. It really is not that complicated once you have committed yourself to global reach."

BMI continues to mail in large volumes at a time when many other publishers have reduced their volumes in the mail. "Because DM still works for us," Richard explains, "and we're smart at list selection and mailing into the worldwide geographies that need and respond to our products, while avoiding those that apparently don't (such as Japan and Germany). We have reduced our FFT volumes because of list fatigue."

The move from print to online

The biggest change BMI has made was transforming itself, in 2000-01, from a publisher of monthly and quarterly print products into an online information provider with data updated daily.

"Moving into online for us was a big challenge, but very worthwhile," Londesborough states. "For us, online means multi-user, site license access to large collections of BMI content that are updated on a very frequent basis. The Business Monitor Online (BMO) platform also allows the clients to use the information in a very interactive way (i.e., to fit our information into their workflow), and this includes access to our analysts.

Editorial practices changed radically

"It's no exaggeration to say that BMO triggered a revolution within BMI. Editorial practices changed radically, with much more emphasis on daily, 'near-time' analysis of worldwide developments. Once online, we came under healthy pressure from our clients and prospects to cover many more bases. In particular, to cover their industry sectors internationally, in conjunction to the country risk coverage we had always been known for.

"We now cover 16 industry verticals, including pharma, telecom, food & drink, autos, oil & gas, insurance, transport, tourism and infrastructure. We now have nearly 100 analysts and researchers covering these areas, all with either sector or geographic specialties."

Additional staffing

Richard continues, "BMO also required a sales force, both field sales and telesales. This team has grown from just one in 2001 to more than 25. The whole culture of sales and sales management is very different from marketing, and this was a major challenge to meet, especially with 90 percent of BMI's clients residing outside the U.K.

Still in print after all these years

Are print newsletters still in the picture? "Yes, print titles certainly do still have a place. Ironically the online development generated a whole new range of industry reports, for both subscription and point-of-sale. Print still represents a good 50 percent of BMI's business, and many of our BMO clients would never have been won in the first place without our print report track record.

"The print business runs hand-in-hand with online, and while the latter is growing at a much faster rate, we have no plans to rationalize our print report business--quite the opposite in fact. Much of the market does not want (or cannot afford) to pay for a high-ticket online service (for tens of thousands of dollars), but wants to subscribe or purchase reports on an ad hoc basis at a few hundred dollars a title. I don't see that habit changing, though the way we deliver these reports (e-mail, PDFs, web links, etc.) is changing fast."

The poor old U.S. dollar

"Our biggest single problem over the last five years has been the fall of the U.S. dollar, which remains the main currency for all our business outside of Europe (including Asia, the Americas and the Middle East).

"I don't think it's improved the U.S. market as such--U.S. subscribers and clients simply have to pay more dollars to match our euro/pound rates. I'm glad to say that the majority are prepared to do that!"

Join the brain drain

"We have made progress in moving some of our costs from sterling to dollars," Richard says, and U.K. publishers have increasingly noticed that USD salaries look good when value-compared to Europe's. At the London SIPA event in July, one colleague even referred to the U.S. as Europe's new low-cost center!"

Newsletter pros, want to work in the UK? BMI is hiring for all types of positions, editorial, marketing, and more. Check the website at Businessmonitor.com/static/careers.

Business Monitor International, Third Floor, 2 Puddle Dock, Blackfriars, London EC4V 4DS, U.K., (44)(0)20-7248-0468, fax [phone], www.businessmonitor.com