SECTOR REPORT: PUBLISHING\\\


Issue 6 2011


31


Despite ‘e-books’ and the Internet, the international book trade is still surprisingly brisk. It’s an important business for many freight forwarding and logistics firms; for some it is their main specialism. But if there’s one thing all these operators have in common, it’s attention to detail in managing oſten complex supply chains.


Woodland Media – doing things by the book


A


ttention to detail is what matters most in publishing logistics, says


Woodland Group’s Andy Dennis. The head of Woodland Media, one of the UK’s foremost publishing freight and logistics providers explains: “There is a lot of work involved with books and magazines that you don’t get with other types of freight - a pallet of books might have 50 different titles on it. That means you have to get much more involved with the product itself, so you tend to look for people with a much keener attention to detail. And the publishers themselves also expect you to understand what their issues are.”


Chelmsford-headquartered


Woodland Group set up Woodland Media as a specialist publishing division about three years ago. The forwarder’s involvement in the book trade actually goes back over 20 years and it already had a specialist operation, Bookbridge Forwarders, which was mostly involved in imports from the Far East. But Woodland Media has been able to give a much stronger focus on all aspects of the sector and in its short life has built up a strong brand awareness in its specialised field. There are dedicated Woodland Media offices in Chelmsford, London Heathrow, New York and Chicago, and a dedicated network of specialist media partners in around a dozen countries including Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain Singapore and South Africa. Woodland Media moves books and magazines mainly from the UK and


US to all parts of the world, by sea and by air. It has also attracted some high-


profile clients, including online retailer Amazon. Woodland moves freight through its gateways at New York, Chicago and Atlanta to Heathrow from where books are distributed to Amazon distribution hubs in the UK and Europe. “Amazon are the market leaders and they have shaped thinking in the industry,” says Andy Dennis . “We’re now han dlin g around 100 tonnes of a airfreight a week, of which a big chunk is Amazo n’ s business into Europe.” T h e


a tt enti o n to detail required for Amazon and Woodland Media’s other publisher clients goes all the way from knowing what size pallets to send to a particular publisher to intricate track and trace systems. Woodland in fact uses a customised system which


then feeds information


into the general Woodland Group freight system. “A general freight tracking package would not be able to accommodate all the information we need,” explains Dennis. “We need to be able to scan every carton, every commercial invoice and keep


track of them as they move through the system.” In some respects, though, books


have an advantage over some other types of freight. They’re generally heavy – which is actually quite good for airfreight, where planes holds tend to get filled with volumetric cargo before reaching their theoretical weight capacity. Books are not a particular security issue, at least compared with watches


else touches it in between origin and destination. I think we’re pretty unique in the publishing world in that we do so many of our own services to all parts of the world.” Customs clearance is not a


great issue in most parts of the world, either. Many, or indeed most countries allow books in duty free and in some, including the UK, there is no VAT on printed books either. This latter factor has in fact made the UK an attractive European


hub


location for books imported from the US and other overseas origins as they can be entered


into


free circulation without payment of VAT. (If VAT is charged on books in the eventual country of destination that would of course have to be charged by


or mobile phones and in any case are generally so well hidden by packaging as to thwart any casual thief. “But you do need expertise with


stowing; sometimes you have to repack the shipper’s pallet to ensure that they survive the journey,” says Dennis who adds: “Books can be prone to damage, but we do have the advantage that we mostly load direct into our own, or the Woodland Group’s own groupage containers or airfreight consolidations, so no one


the retailer, but importing via the UK does at least give a cash-flow advantage.) Woodland Media’s network continues to grows.


It has added


Brazil in the past four months. “We’ve got a great partner there – Freight Action – who started off working with our US office but have now become our new partner here in the UK,” says Dennis. He adds that China is growing fast too, partly because laws that insisted that educational books had to be in Chinese have been


relaxed: “There is great potential there, because once the Chinese start importing something, they tend to do it on a very big scale.” If new electronic formats making


are inroads into the


traditional printed book trade, Andy Dennis says that he hasn’t seen any evidence of it reflected in Woodland Media’s own volumes.


“We’re seeing very rapid growth and we’ve increased our business by 100% in the past three years. Maybe electronic books will make a difference in the end, but in the meantime many developing countries are increasing their demand for English language books, so I think things will go from strength to strength in the next few years.”


The lads for mags I


f the book business is intricate, sending magazines to all parts of


the world is even more complex, says Woodland Media head, Andy Dennis. “Yes, once the freight has been palletised, it’s much the same as books, but up to that point it can be a lot more complex.” Woodland Media operates an extensive picking operation at


its


Chelmsford hub, and of the roughly 45,000sq ft dedicated to books and magazines, the latter takes up perhaps 35,000sq ft. Woodland Media also exports a lot of magazines to the US, and it often has to stick new bar-codes over the ones printed on the magazine cover to suit systems there. “We get through about 11.5 million stickers a year,” says Dennis. Woodland in fact does export


work for three of the four main UK magazine distributors. “Magazines are a bit more difficult – it’s another level of detail,” Dennis continues. “One title might be going to 50 countries and in the US alone there could be perhaps 30 individual destinations.” UK-published magazines have


long been popular in English- speaking parts of the world – and even in some non English-speaking countries – along with holiday and expatriate haunts of southern Europe such as Spain and Greece. We may be in a moral panic


over the influence of the tabloid press in this country, but in the US


British-produced titles are seen as a cut above their US counterparts in terms of quality of production and writing, even where a US version of the title is available. A cover price of, perhaps $15 as against $4 for a US-published title, doesn’t seem to deter consumers unduly, although volumes to the US have been eroded somewhat by the recession, says Dennis. The titles that are exported


overseas are as diverse as the UK publishing industry itself. “We must do something like 500 individual titles,” says Dennis. To the US, Woodland Media feeds


magazines to distributors, of which Source Interlink is the biggest, with 75% of the market. The distributors then work with wholesalers to get the mags onto retailers’ shelves. It’s actually a lack of a distribution and wholesaling that is holding back development of a market for English magazines in some developing countries, particularly China, Dennis believes. “People have found it hard to distribute there – perhaps we need to work with the industry and try and come up with a solution.” Surprisingly, many


of the


monthly magazines move by sea rather than air. Weekly titles tend to move by air over long distances, however – it wouldn’t do for anyone to get their fix of celebrity gossip several days out of date.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40