What is your career background?
Originally from Belfast, I graduated with a degree in Business Studies and French from Stirling University and I got my first job at NatMag distribution company, Comag, in 1992 as a graduate trainee in the Client Relations department. I stayed at Comag for five years progressing through the client relations department and working closely with a whole range of Comag's publisher clients including The Economist, John Brown Publishing and Conde Nast. I then joined the circulation department at NatMag in 1998 and my first role involved representing our brands within the key retail multiple groups such as WH Smith and Tesco. I became Head of Newstrade Marketing in 2002 and my role switched to become more internally focused and along with the team we work closely with our publishers to develop appropriate circulation strategies across all newstrade markets both in the UK and overseas.
What attracted you to NatMag?
When I was at Comag I worked with Circulation teams across the magazine business and I decided that in terms of the next step in my career I would like to work for a publisher. Working for a publisher enables you to be closer to the decision making process and you can really play a part in shaping the magazine's future. NatMag is one of the biggest publishing houses in the UK and therefore offered a tremendous opportunity to work with great household brands like Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping and also to learn from some of the best people in the magazine industry.
What does you role involve?
When you say you work for a magazine company people assume you are a journalist but there are a whole range of other functions that the company needs to get our magazines into the hands of our readers. My role is as the interface between NatMag and our distributor, wholesalers and retailers. As a circulation team we are responsible for forecasting and planning the supply and sales of our magazines sold through newsagents, high street stores and supermarkets and ensure that we have the right distribution network in place to support each issue. Retailers, especially the bigger players, select the titles that they stock in their stores so we need to get their agreement before we can place product in their stores. We also manage a promotional budget to ensure strong in store displays for key issues and agreements that ensure, for example, checkout positions in supermarkets. Over the last few years I have become specifically responsible for the circulation of our new weekly portfolio of magazines and have been lucky enough to work on two major weekly launches - Reveal in 2004 and Real People in 2006. In addition I am also responsible for export sales across our portfolio. We export to over 70 overseas countries targeting either regular readers on holiday in the summer, ex pats or overseas readers and again I work closely with our distributor and our overseas agents to manage the sales opportunities in this area.
What is the best thing about working for NatMag
I would have to say that the best thing about NatMag is the company culture and the people. Having worked here for nine years I have seen some big changes but although we now employ over 1000 people there is still a smaller company feel. I am also a magazine junkie so it's great to be able to read your favourite magazines and call that research!
