Ulverscroft

Source: Exec Digital UK

Date :31/08/2007 11:34:13

A pioneering company founded on compassion and determination

IF two ladies from the WRVS had not approached Ulverscroft Group’s founder Frederick Thorpe in 1964, reading services for the elderly and visually impaired might not be where they are today. Alison Withers spoke to CEO Robert Thirlby about Ulverscroft’s unique and inspiring story

Written by Alison Withers & Produced by Rahim Ali

Frederick Thorpe had just retired from his own magazine publishing business when the two persuaded him that more needed to be done for people whose sight was failing. He agreed, and F A Thorpe Publishing was founded to produce large type versions of books already in print.

His first problem was to persuade publishers to agree to give him the rights to the books. The publishers were sceptical and Thorpe’s was an uphill struggle. Then, coming out of yet another unsuccessful meeting with a publishing house, he bumped into the crime writer Agatha Christie. He told her about the problem and she immediately instructed her publisher to give Thorpe the rights to all her books. Once word got round, Ulverscroft’s current CEO Robert Thirlby says, “publishers started falling over themselves” to offer other authors’ works. That solved problem number one.

Knowing his target audience was the elderly and visually impaired, who didn’t have the means or financial resources to buy books, Thorpe’s view was that they should be made available via the public library service, which, says Thirlby, was “not immediately keen”. The indomitable Thorpe embarked on a campaign to convince them otherwise and spent a lot of his time and money travelling to all the major libraries in English-speaking countries around the world to convince them of the need. His success in arguing his case was, Thirlby believes, instrumental in changing attitudes so that libraries eventually started to offer other services such as deliveries to the housebound.

Half a century later the Ulverscroft Group, which grew out of Frederick Thorpe Publishing, is in a global market as the UK’s leading producer of large print books and unabridged audio books. But, says Thirlby, there are still battles to fight.

The situation now

Thorpe had realised that his publishing house needed to expand and modernise. Over the years, he shepherded it through changes and acquisitions to the point where holding company Ulverscroft Group Ltd, based in Leicestershire, owns subsidiaries Ulverscroft Large Print Books Ltd, Library Magna Books Ltd and Isis Publishing Ltd (acquired in 2001 with its subsidiary, Soundings).

Ulverscroft Large Print Books Ltd publishes large print books through its F A Thorpe publishing division and distributes products for the other group companies. Magna and Isis publish large print books and unabridged audio books. Soundings specialises in audio books. Each has its own special publishing identity. The group publishes 72 large print titles and 38 unabridged audio titles a month.

One thing that sets Ulverscroft apart from competitors is that it records all its own audio books in its own studios, which enables it to oversee quality control. Says Thirlby: “We can’t then blame anyone else if there’s a problem.”

Until April 2005, Ulverscroft had its own printing subsidiary T J International, which it sold to a management buy-out in April 2005. It had invested in major new equipment in 1995 to allow T J International to develop into a world class book printer. The decision to sell allowed Ulverscroft to focus on its core function and T J International to develop its own future.

Another unique aspect of the operation is that Ulverscroft Group Ltd is wholly owned by a charity, the Ulverscroft Foundation, so none of the directors of the commercial operation own any shares. A percentage of the companies’ profits are gift-aided to the Foundation, which provides money to organisations and people working in the field of research and treatment of eye diseases. This includes the Ulverscroft unit at Great Ormond Street Children’s’ Hospital in London, which allows the hospital to take in children with eye problems from all over the world.

Thirlby, who joined the Ulverscroft board in 1995 and was appointed CEO in 1997,says the group only produces already-published titles, but that doesn’t mean only best sellers and classics. “Because we publish so many titles a month, we can’t just stick with the classics and well known authors because there aren’t enough of them. We do have quite a number of titles from lesser-known authors.” Ulverscroft has a number of readers who have to satisfy themselves that these books are a good read and of interest. Print runs are set at the level the company believes will sell, erring on the side of caution, and if there is still a demand after a run has sold out, it then produces very short runs using digital print technology, allowing the company to avoid holding very large stocks. The digital print books are of exactly the same quality as the originals: “We didn’t embark on this until we were satisfied that the technology of digital printing was on a par with litho,” he says.

Thirlby introduced the system some years ago “to try and cut down on the value of stock we hold which, if you can’t sell in the first few months, you won’t at all in the library market. It’s a way of enhancing the bottom line.” He estimates Ulverscroft supplies 99.5 percent of the English language library market worldwide.

Performance management

The company went through a performance management review in the 1990s to bring it up to date and put it in a position to compete, which unfortunately meant some redundancies. It continues to review its operations to increase efficiency. It introduced new management information systems a couple of years ago which have been rolled out through the group to provide live data electronically on sales, finance, production and stock.

Thirlby says: “It has made us more efficient and that does drive the business – everything’s on there; industrial, rights, royalties, stock management, invoicing, personnel.” It also has electronic data interchange with libraries for ordering, auditing and invoicing. Ulverscroft has always operated its own distribution chain, rarely using third party distribution and it has operations in Australia, New Zealand, USA, and Canada which effectively run as sales companies.

It’s in the fortunate position of having an extremely low staff turnover. Says Thirlby: “We have an awful lot of expertise in editorial and manufacturing. Libraries know our titles are going to be worthwhile even if they don’t recognise the author and we major on customer service. We very rarely have to recruit at all. When we do we use local agencies and we train everyone internally. “

The company has an equal number of men and women at all levels, from executive director down, and at core levels of the shop floor team leaders are encouraged to make their own decisions and solve their own problems: “We have found it has been beneficial. We’ve put a lot into getting to this stage and it’s by and large been beneficial,” says Thirlby. “I believe the individuals themselves get more satisfaction from it and it makes their day more fulfilling.”

Community involvement is also strong: “Staff raise money throughout the year for various community projects.” Thirlby himself is taking on a major challenge this year doing the coast to coast walk of 192 miles from Cumbria to Robin Hood’s Bay to raise money for a local hospice. There’s a secure site www.justgiving.com/rthirlby for anyone who wants to know more.

What of the future?

What does a company do when it’s already supplying virtually all of its available market in a fairly restricted sector? Thirlby is by no means complacent and, true to the campaigning spirit of the company’s late founder, has some trenchant observations on issues like local authority funding and the tendency to want to save money by cutting library services, which are often seen as an easy target.

He says: “I know of several authorities that have tried to close libraries and local campaigns have been the only reason they’ve changed their minds. All this is down to funding. It really is a scandal because the demand for large print is every-increasing as the population ages. It really does a disservice to the community.

“How do they expect people to read if they don’t make them available for free? There’s more to reading than just the £4 best sellers you get in supermarkets. In my view the book fund for large print and alternative formats should be ring fenced. In other parts of the world, it does vary but it’s nowhere near as extreme as it is in the UK. Australia and New Zealand do have issues with finance but they do still seem to have a big budget for this sector.” He believes Ulverscroft needs to stay global if it’s going to grow its customer base given the threat of budget cuts in the UK’s library sector. “The resources and customer base won’t grow.”

Another relevant issue is the production of audio books in MP3 format. Here again Thirlby is outspoken. Isis was acquired in 2001, he says, to strengthen Ulverscroft in the audio sector. He says public libraries do seem to be considering that other forms of modern technology should be available but there are a lot of issues to be sorted out – not least the issue of digital rights and royalties when it comes to downloadable audio books.

Then there’s the choice of technology involved. “We can do MP3 format. It’s just a compressed audio file,” he says. “But the issue is whether to use a memory card, a simple unit that looks like an MP3 player, or whether to make it downloadable.”

Thirlby believes there has to be a universal system used by all libraries. “It’s about volume. The margins are not great given the library problems with financial resources and there’s a question over whether they need another format. They’re not going to buy in three formats and if they do how many users can use it?”

His solution is to run some pilot projects and to try to get together a consortium from the library sector, offering them information on the options, but not yet to offer an MP3 format: “It’s something we have to keep an eye on for the future as the demographics change. Technically we can do it but the libraries need to appreciate the other issues. We can do whatever they want but they have to agree on how they want to make it viable. It’s a potentially good area in due course.”