For Sale: prestigious brand offering a wealth of contacts and contact with the wealthy and famous.
Who’s Who Publications, the definitive directory of Britain’s elite, is up for sale on BusinessesForSale.com.
Its present owner, Jeremy Hall, who bought the magazine in 2004 six years after its foundation, describes an unconventional business with some interesting clients.
“The first call we took into our office was Frank Bruno’s daughter’s personal assistant,” he recalls. “The next one was the editor of the Guardian, who was leaving war-torn Beirut and had just had his briefcase stolen. We’ve spoken to colonels, brigadiers… all sorts of people.”
Elite brand
One of the more unusual opportunities on BusinessesForSale.com, Who’s Who offers prospective buyers a chance to network with Britain’s elite, and if they’re a company that targets high net-worth individuals it’s also an invaluable marketing resource.
When Rover was sold it was bought by a car manufacturer, Green and Blacks was sold to another chocolate manufacturer and Etam went to a clothing retail magnate. But Who’s Who, says Jeremy Hall, is different because “there are probably between 10 and 20 types of business that could buy it.
“It could be travel agents selling upmarket holidays, an IFA, an accountants, an internet-based company that wants to put a member’s club together, a recruitment agency, a training company, a design company or a marketing company. It’s not like a printing business which you can bolt on to another printing business to get economies of scale.”
He also thinks it would be a good purchase for an elite brand.
“It’s the sort of thing that brands like Aston Martin, Rolls Royce or Rolex would want to buy. There are hundreds of different brands out there selling elite, prestigious projects to the sort of people in our books.”
Whoever buys the illustrious publication “will get to speak to a lot of influential, eminent business individuals”: 13,900 high net-worth individuals have updated their profile on the site over the past year.
“They could put an online social network together for successful business people to talk to each other, share information and advertise each other’s companies and services.
“It’s also a very cool investment,” he adds. “If I’m on holiday and I tell someone I’m chairman of a leasing company” – which Jeremy is – “they turn over on their sunbed and go back to sleep. If you say you’re involved in Who’s Who, someone will have a conversation with you about it.
“So it would be somebody who wants to network with other business people, somebody with a specific product or service to sell, or someone who wants to get out there and meet people and have a bit of fun. It’s really an unusual business.”
Jeremy Hall bought the magazine after seeing himself in the publication in 2002. He featured by virtue of the computer leasing business he set up in 1989 aged only 24.
“I really liked the concept of it and I couldn’t work out why I wasn’t in the book in 2004, so I spoke to the publisher and ‘did a Victor Kiam' and bought the company.”
So why is he selling something he calls a “fun, exciting investment” and a “pastime” as well as a business?
“This is one of a portfolio of companies I have and the reason I’m selling is very simple: I just can’t give it the time and attention it needs. I should give someone else the pleasure of playing with it!”
The business is for sale on BusinessesForSale.com for £67.5k, but so intangible is much of the brand’s value that it could easily be higher.
“We’ve deliberately tried to value at a sensible price.
“But it could be worth a quarter of a million to someone who can use the data, the email addresses, the 7,500 telephone numbers. The brand could be used to develop a really high quality recruitment business, training business or marketing business.
“If you can speak to just 10 of the 3,000 people whose email addresses you have and they post a few orders with you for something else – then you’ve paid your money back overnight.”
