A tale of how to succeed in business media: Briefing Media rebrands into AgriBriefing
The company’s evolution over seven years shows the strong market dynamics behind specialist vertical business intelligence companies.
Neil Thackray and Rory Brown founded the company, convinced that the wider media market was overlooking key opportunities in a rush to scale, and a reliance on platforms.
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Rory Brown
They instead focused on gaining a deep understanding of key verticals, providing information that was critical to business decisions and which was difficult for the market participants to gather independently; information that was exclusive, important and which consequently had a higher economic value to users.
Achieving exceptional growth
Growth over recent years has shown the success of this strategy: turnover has trebled over five years; profits doubled in two and AgriBriefing now derives nearly 70 per cent of its income from dependable recurring subscription or re-occurring events revenue streams.
Rory Brown explains, “Our success also reflects the global agribusiness market we now exclusively serve. There’s a compelling need for more transparency and trusted pricing benchmarks across sometimes opaque markets in this vital sector.
“It’s a global business with associated supply chains requiring an ever increasing sophistication of data to function efficiently.
“Across AgriBriefing’s market intelligence businesses we provide the independent benchmarks around which agricultural inputs and produce are traded.”
500,000 agribusiness customers in 200 countries
Brown continues, “Across our brands, we are now delivering live pricing, premium news, analysis, data, insight and market intelligence to more than 500,000 agribusiness participants in 200 countries.
“Decisions worth hundreds of billions of dollars are informed by our brands across the sector, from the science of feed nutrients, to precision farming developments and the effective operation of the protein supply chain.”
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The AgriBriefing brands are prospering
In a media market in which some struggle, AgriBriefing’s approach has seen even our more traditional brands prosper:
Farmers Guardian – our UK farming title – has had its most profitable year in its 170+ years of publishing.
LAMMA – our agricultural machinery and services exhibition – will host nearly 1,000 exhibitors and 50,000 farming visitors this month.
The biotechnology and animal feed pricing business Feedinfo will double revenues this year as it expands into Asia and the Americas, with new analyst hires and the launch of events in Bangkok and Miami.
As we focus exclusively on agribusiness and extend our brands around the world, we discover many deep connections between our communities of agronomists, precision farmers, agrochemical companies, supermarkets, commodity traders and animal nutrition specialists. Each of these connections provides an information opportunity.
The AgriBriefing stable now includes Comtell, Agrimoney, FlexNews, the Croptec Show, Arable Farming, Dairy Farmer and British Farming Awards, along with Farmers Guardian, LAMMA and Feedinfo, mentioned above.
Specialist vertical companies will thrive
Brown says, “We’re delivering pricing and insight that delivers a clear ROI to our customers and is difficult for them to uncover without expert support.
“Exclusive niche information, that customers pay premium prices to receive, will always have a strong investment profile. It allows us to invest back in the business as a result of the high margins we can deliver.”
Mid-market private equity investor Lyceum Capital backed a management buyout of the company in 2015.
Daniel Adler, partner at Lyceum Capital says, “The rebrand better reflects this company’s strategic focus and exceptional international growth.
“We look forward to its continued success through increased customer reach and targeted acquisitions.”
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