Haymarket

About Haymarket

Its Britain's largest privately-owned publishing company. Haymarket publishes a wide range of popular enthusiast magazines, from motoring to soccer via hi-fi, and is a leading publisher of specialist magazines for business and the professions. It has a growing presence in the United States of America, the Pacific Rim and Asia.

Haymarket's main business is expanding rapidly as acquisitions and new launches add to a range of high-quality magazines for a wide variety of specialist business and consumer needs.

The aim in each market has always been to achieve market leadership through accurately targeted editorial of the highest possible quality, which in turn will attract the highest quality circulation for advertisers.

From this strong position a magazine can surround itself with a portfolio of allied services within its market, building a range of activities with the magazine at its head. These can encompass events, exhibitions, conferences, marketing services, customer magazines, electronic publishing and bespoke publishing projects, including contract and customer magazines.

Haymarket's magazines are published in a dozen different languages in over 20 countries either by direct investment or licence.

This experience has enabled them to offer a highly specialised international contract publishing service to leading companies determined to bring the highest standards of consumer and specialist publishing to their own brand magazines.

The history of Haymarket

The history of the group starts in the 1950s when, as Cornmarket Press, it published the Directory of Opportunities series of career reference books. Town magazine was launched in 1960. This led to a partnership with the printers, Hazell Watson and Viney and the name Haymarket.

Management Today was the major breakthrough into prestigious specialist publishing. In 1965 a small medical group which published the pharmaceutical index, MIMS, was purchased and by that year Haymarket had a staff of 50 and a turnover of £700,000. The group now employs 1000 people and has an annual turnover of £130 million, making it the largest privately-owned magazine company in Britain. It is responsible for more than 75 publications across five continents.

Their group structure

Growth has been achieved by pursuing two basic strategies - to launch and develop new publications and to purchase and revitalise existing ones. In both cases the goal has always been to establish market leaders as rapidly as possible.

Exhibitions
In conjunction with the developing magazine portfolio the same strategies have been employed in parallel activities. Haymarket's exhibitions subsidiary now stages 11 major events, some linked to Haymarket titles and others totally independent of them, including several run in partnership with the British Broadcasting Corporation. Haymarket events now attract over a million visitors a year, more than any other consumer exhibition company in Britain.

Electronic Publishing
Technology in electronic publishing now allows each title to use its market position as a base for a wide variety of innovative developments.

Events
Promoted alongside many of the magazines are dedicated specialist conferences and annual awards like the Campaign Advertising Awards in the business sector, the What Car? Awards in the consumer sector and recruitment events like Visit.

Marketing Services
Haymarket's in-company marketing services range from Haymarket Direct, which offers over 300,000 highly targeted names and addresses, via Brand Solutions, which helps advertising clients to find new ways of extending their brands, to a wide variety of customer magazines and special projects.

Developments
Over the past year has been one of rapid expansion for Haymarket. A range of acquisitions and launches covering print and electronic titles has added over 25 new magazines and a number of current negotiations are likely to see further increases.

In the UK magazine acquisitions include Human Resources, Internet Business, IT Training and Stuff. The Net launches in June 1999 as a monthly helping people get the best from the Internet. A separate edition, in association with Freeserve, goes on sale in Dixons group stores. Overseas F1 Racing has extended its circulation to five continents through a dozen national and international editions, selling 400,000 copies every month.

In the USA PR Week has been launched as a sister newspaper to the UK edition.

In Hong Kong and China Haymarket has gone into a partnership with the South China Morning Post group and with the Media Asia group.

The company now publishes magazines in more than a dozen countries and in seven major languages. This international spread allows them to offer a world-wide specialist service as contract publisher to companies seeking to strengthen their relationship with their own customers around the globe.

Meanwhile in electronic publishing Haymarket has developed many websites. CampaignLive won a prestigious Cyber Lion Award. Other major sites include What Car? Online, Autosport Online and Planning Direct. The CD ROM monthly, eMIMS, made its debut in April. The recently acquired Graduate Group's National Training Index provides data on business courses and consultancies in both electronic and printed forms.

174 Hammersmith Road,
London
W6 7JP

http://www.haymarketgroup.com