Act 1 - Why we bought a business in the pandemic

Once upon a time Covid decimated our business

2020 marks the 26th year in business for Ink. We exclusively work in the travel sector and if you have flown on one of our airlines no doubt you would have read one of our magazines. Because that’s what we did, we were the magazine people. And our existence was built around inspiring people to make better choices. Whether that was by seeing the world through a different lens with the award winning content we produced, or through the brands we put in front of this incredible audience. Our platform was print – terribly antiquated, wholly unsexy and for years we had been told the same old phrase – print is dead.

Except it wasn’t. Because closing out our financial year in 2019 on 31st December we had made more profit than we had ever done before. We were working with more airlines than we had ever done. We had more people part of the Ink family than we could ever have dreamt of. And most importantly – we were only focused on and obsessed with how we maximised the potential of the 300+ people that worked for the business. For us it was all about our people and they were at the heart of everything we did.

Mainly because of my sporting background and the mindset of our CEO, Simon Leslie, we did some really crazy things. I remember sitting with him in a restaurant in Abu Dhabi having recently won the contract for Etihad and saying I had watched this programme called Billions and that I wanted a ‘Wendy’ to come into the business and make our people better. So the next day when we got back to the UK we had our very own Cognitive Behavioural Therapist. From life coaches, to NLP training, to sending our people to every corner of the world to experience what travel can do for the mind, body and spirit, and much much more - we invested in our people like we had never done before and were flying high (pun intended). We felt nothing and no one could stop us.

I want to rewind a couple of years back to 2018 and the business had just been sold by our investors at the time, Endless, to a big group in the US called Stagwell. The deal was closed at 1am in the morning in a lawyer’s office in London by Simon and our CFO, Jim, with our other CEO, Michael Keating, in Milan closing another airline contract. We were continuing our journey and this part of it was with some American backers.

The very next day we were having a leadership getaway in London and Simon turned up at around 10am bleary eyed and clearly relieved that the deal had gotten over the line and he didn’t have to deal with any more bankers for some time.

In hindsight I don’t think it was probably the kindest or smartest move, but when we had our mid-morning break I set the team a task to do for a few hours and turned to Simon and said we needed a chat – ‘let’s go and get a coffee’. I think at the time all he heard was coffee as he duly nodded and followed me out the door.

Having got a double espresso for Simon and an equally potent coffee for myself we sat, and I opened my mouth and spoke my mind (which is normally a dangerous and uncontrollable event and highly advised against).

‘I know that you are probably shattered and this is the last conversation that you want to have right now but I need to tell you what has been on my mind for some time now and for the record I don’t feel sorry for you. Congratulations, but I don’t feel sorry for you being tired and I need you to listen to me for 15 minutes’. I said those exact words. ‘I don’t feel sorry for you’! In hindsight I could have showed a little more empathy and timing was never my strong point!

However, I continued………..

‘we are playing in a puddle and there is an ocean of opportunity out there. We have the opportunity to connect with, guide and inspire over 1.5 billion passengers across 25 of the world’s biggest airlines. We are only concentrating on a small part of the overall journey and we are not maximising our potential as a business. I care, and take a stand for, maximising potential and we are doing under 10% of what we are capable of right now and I can’t stand it any more. We need to do something about it’.

This was a significant conversation in that, for me, despite whether times are good or bad, or very good or very bad – always lead with vision. Because it is vision that will get you where you want to be a lot quicker, and you can take a lot more people with you along for the adventure - despite the circumstances you find yourself in.

There was more said in my 15 minute diatribe and despite me being potentially ignorant and big headed at the time – Simon sat there and really listened (one of the signs of a great leader).

We continued to discuss what maximising potential could look like and what this ocean of opportunity meant for us and more importantly, for the business. Over the following 2 years we purchased a US TV network which is in over 60 of the major US airports, started working on the contract for Virgin Atlantic which meant looking after multiple assets across the passenger journey, and convinced Eurowings to let us look after their brand partnerships – much like the sponsorship deals you see across sport today.

However, we were still very much the print people and relied far too much on the revenue and profit this brought into the business.

So, having closed out our most successful year ever we set out in 2020 to make sure we raised the bar even higher and smashed all previous records out of the park.

I can’t remember whether it was late January or early February but the whispers started to come out of China. Something about a virus and one that was highly contagious.

Then those whispers started to get louder.

I don’t know whether it was the same for you, but I was only paying half attention to it all as it felt so far away and I wrongly assumed it would not affect us (or at least some lessened version of it).

Then Italy. A little closer to home.

Even still, it wasn’t on our doorstep and clearly at the time we didn’t understand the magnitude of what was about to happen.

One of the last bits of freedom I had was watching England batter Wales at Twickenham in the 6 Nations with 80,000+ other people. Having endured years of pain watching us lose to Wales and having the displeasure of doing so with Simon (a Welshman) - it was a good feeling. And I have never in my life seen so many blokes wash their hands at a sporting event after they had a wee.

Covid was clearly closing in.

Then on that fateful day in March when Boris Johnson stood in front of us on our TV screens and said we were going to have to stay in our homes, most of our worlds came crashing down. At least ours did.

Lockdown.

Planes grounded in every airport in every corner of the world.

Almost overnight our industry had completely stopped.

People couldn’t travel.

Cashflow, which is the lifeblood of any business, had gone from very positive to extremely negative.

What were we going to do?