Helmut Graf is chief executive officer of Bonn-based VNR Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft AG (VNR Publishing House for the German World). We were able to do an extensive Q&A interview by e-mail.
Asked about his career path, Helmut explains, “I studied business studies and management in Cologne. I started my career as a junior consultant in a Dortmund consulting company, before becoming an academic assistant at the university in the same town.
“In 1985, I came into contact with the publishing house as a freelance author of its first looseleaf publication that is still on the market today. Manual for the Self-Employed and Entrepreneurs. In 1989, I started working for what was then Norman Rentrop Publishing. Since 1998 I have been chief executive office of VNR Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft AG, a member of Rentrop Publishing Group.”
Asked about changes made under his leadership, Helmut says: ”The publishing house has been growing continually. Over the past few years we have created a new structure, building in a second management level. Today there are 11 publishing groups under one roof, and in all of them, products offering advice and consultancy are being developed and produced. At the same time, we are adapting and extending the forms in which we offer our many products to our readers to suit their needs.”
Big increase in number of publications
“We are no longer the ‘looseleaf publishers’ we were once described as. We do loose-leaf publications, newsletters, CD-ROMs, yearbooks. Since 2001 until today, we have been able to increase turnover by over 40 percent. The number of products has grown even more – from 82 to 203. and there is one more important figure: The turnover for ‘young products’, products that have been on the market for less than five years, has doubled since 2000.
“Newsletters have superseded loosleaf publications: the demand for trader services, electronic products as well as conventions and conferences is growing.”
The number of employees is also growing, from 317 in 2001 to 440 today. Helmut says.
“Not only our customers but also our employees profit from the fact that we see ourselves as a knowledge company. We promote both their creativity and independence through dedicated training. And our internal training scheme, which fosters young talent, is an investment that pays. Well-known German and international experts and speakers from areas, such as editing, marketing, advertising and management coach our staff in seminars, round table talks and individually.” (Editor’s note: I had the opportunity to work with the VNR staffs in Washington in 1996 and in Bonn and Warsaw in 1999.)
Bases success on outside expert editors and authors
Helmut continues, “For the most part, work together with external authors and advertising specialists. This is one of the main pillars of our business principles, and it is arguably one of the most important success factors.
“Our external editors-in-chief and authors are all experts in their field, and they bring this expertise into our publications. And this is where our various managers and their staff come into their own by giving this expertise a practical context in a language that puts the readers on the same level as the experts, enabling them to become more successful in their jobs and in their private lives.
We give this expertise a practical context in a language that puts the readers on the same level as the experts, enabling them to become more successful in their jobs and in their private lives.
In 11 countries, but not the U.S.
“We currently operate in 11 international markets,“ Helmut says. “In Poland and Romania we can already look back on ten years of successful joint ventures.
In France and the U.K. tests have been successful and our partnerships there are well on the way to establishing themselves. In Hungary and Russia we are in the process of testing the markets. In Spain and South Africa we went a different way. In both these markets we awarded licences to existing publishing houses.
“We are not in the U.S. market at the moment, but our managers and product management staff take the opportunity to exchange information with specialist publishers at the annual SIPA conference. They always come back with new ideas and impulses.”
Marketing on the Move
Responding to a question about his marketing methods, Helmut says, “You could describe our strategy as ‘Marketing on the Move’. We are forever testing new methods of direct marketing. In only a few years, the balance between the different advertising channels has shifted drastically. The number of customers we get through traditional direct mailing is only a fifth of what it was in 2000.
“But telephone marketing is now twice as important as it was. Online marketing is growing very fast. Finding the right advertising channel is becoming more and more important all the time. We follow the development on the advertising market through continual tests, and we are constantly seeking the best advertising channel for all our different products and target groups.”
The internet
Asked about the effect of the internet on their operations, Helmut explains. “It has been easy to observe this rapid shift in advertising and in the forms our products take.
“For us as a company driven directly by advertising, the internet has developed into the most important and at the same time most promising advertising channel. In 2000, less than one percent of new customers came through the internet. Today it is more than 20 percent.
“No one knows where this development is leading. As far as product distribution is concerned, one of the big advantages of the internet is that we can get highly relevant information to our customers more or less in real time. This service has yielded good returns, for us and for our customers.”
“We are going to test, test, test, test and test our ideas.”
Future plans of interest?
“Always!” Helmut says. “And true to our long-standing philosophy, we are going to test, test, test, test, test and test our ideas before we put them into the market. That’s because not every good idea is a success , and we can’t always be certain to reach the hearts and minds of our target group.
“Our most important job was and still is to put ourselves in our customers’ shoes, as a good consultant once put it. Our mission statement is:
We make people more successful in their private and professional lives by finding the best experts we know, putting it into context and making it easy to understand and easily accessible for everyone.
Helmut sums up his challenges: “By increasing the number of our current fields, developing new ones and growing internationally, we intend to continue along this successful road, with the same high standards.
“This is not just a vision. It is also an exciting and interesting challenge, a challenge my colleagues and I are glad to take up.”
Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft AG
Theodor-Heuss-Str. 2-4
53177 Bonn, Germany
(49)(228)8205-0, fax (49)(228)3597-10.
Helmut Graf
Helmut Graf is CEO of VNR Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft AG (VNR Publishing House for the German Business World), a member of the Rentrop Publishing Group, Germany.
When he joined VNR in 1989, he started publishing activities in Switzerland and Austria. Later he formed joint ventures with publishing houses in Poland and Romania.
He made an agreement with the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., to introduce the Mayo Clinic Health Letter to the German Market. He is also responsible for a joint project with Agora Inc., Baltimore, Maryland, introducing newsletters such as Taipan and Oxford Club to the German Market.
In 1998 Helmut took over the business leadership of VNR Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft AG as a whole. Today, 10 publishing groups belong to the company. Together with the sister company, FID Publishing House Inc., VNR publishes 203 newsletters, loos-leaf services, and electronic publications. Now they are in the top ten of German publishing houses for business and economics.
Graf is a member of SIPA’s board of directors. And, we might add, he usually brings more staff members to SIPA’s annual conference in Washington D.C., than any other publisher. He typically flies in 30 to 40 thirtysomethings from Bonn, Germany, and puts them up in The Mayflower Hotel – apparently part of what he calls “our international training scheme, which fosters young talent.”
