INTERVIEW
the day! Oh and of course the trustee and his team, who were in fact left with a very complicated bankruptcy of a concern in 23+ countries.
At the end of six weeks, we made an offer to buy Accucoms and on 6 November the company was born again. Normally I don’t care about job titles, but I like mine a lot. It says I am the founder of Accucoms. I joke about it as I founded the company a few times. However, as this the case, I have been supported by my relentless management team Egon Menardi, Simon Boisseau and Rakesh Malik. These men are co-founders and stakeholders of Accucoms.
Pinar Erzin
manage and grow Accucoms further. The concern would take all administrative management off my shoulders so I could focus on developing the business. Accucoms would be kept as a separate entity under Swets ownership, maintaining its name, brand, company culture and management style. I must say nothing was sour between Accucoms and Swets.
Our marriage was a pretty happy one. The company left me with sufficient space to achieve goals and gave me full back office support and I focused fully on developing a very strong team and grew the business, strategically as well as financially. In fact,
‘It was all about re-establishing ourselves, focusing on our core business’
a year before the bankruptcy, Accucoms grew its profits by multitudes and Swets transferred all its commercial operations in Latin America and Asia to Accucoms. The Swets Information Services concern was going to be sold at the end of 2014 however and for reasons irrelevant to Accucoms’ business, the plans for a sale didn’t work out and we all were declared bankrupt by the end of September 2014. There we were, with our multiplied growth and the best international team ever, bankrupt and unemployed.
How did we deal with the bankruptcy? For exactly six weeks, we didn’t sleep, we calculated, we forecasted, we talked to all competitors, potential buyers, bankers, investors and each other at most hours of
30 Research Information AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2016
Was it immediately clear that Accucoms was going to be a success following the relaunch?
What do we call immediate? First few days? No it wasn’t clear. First few weeks? Yes, absolutely! You see, in October 2014 we went to Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) as a bankrupt company and unemployed people, with our own money. First of all, the support and commitment of my whole team was the most important reason for fighting through the bankruptcy. Then, what we saw at FBF was the full support of our publishers and all potential buyers who understood why we wanted independence…
Throughout the whole six weeks I communicated with our team and our publishers continuously about the situation, our intentions and even our challenges. I asked for support and I got nothing but support. I can confirm that I am absolutely one very lucky person!
As soon as we bought our company back, we incorporated ourselves anew, re-signed all our employment agreements with our staff and all commercial agreements with our customers within a matter of weeks. By the end of January 2015, I was surely breathless, exhausted, tired, but also knew everything was going to be fine.
How have things changed now that you are independent again?
From November 2014 till November 2015, it was all about re-establishing ourselves, focusing on our core business, without inventing any new initiatives and adventures. Being independent has allowed us to focus on delivering a good service to our publishers and to think freely about
solving some tough problems for them. Since the beginning of 2016, we worked hard to develop a new solution specifically for society publishers, university presses and other scholarly publishers. It’s called The Aggregagent. It is a registered product and solution that will take the ‘Big Deal’ and turn it into a ‘Good Deal’ both for publishers and libraries globally. It is about introducing a transparent business model, where small and meaningful collections with content of the highest quality will be made available for institutions, corporations, consortia and national buying groups.
The Aggregagent will offer publishers full transparency and control over their own business, while helping them benefit from the power of many. Libraries will have access to small and large collections of the best societies and publishers, while administration and access will be fully organised for them. Being independent at this stage helps Accucoms to become a true solution provider.
What do the next few years hold for Accucoms? I think during the next few years, we are going to serve a very important cause for publishers, who want to grow their international market share without losing control over their revenues and branding. The Aggregagent will help publishers increase their global reach and readership, and launch new titles successfully. For libraries, we will become a source for top quality content that is easily available for their specific needs as large or as small as they wish to acquire.
If there is one thing you have learned in the last few years, what would it be?
I am a Gemini, so there is never just one thing!
Never think the circle is round, as you
don’t know what’s coming. No one will solve your problems for you – you have to get up and do it yourself. Always. The team is key. Without a strong team, there are no customers, hence no business. Serving a cause is always better, more meaningful, more enjoyable and eventually more profitable, than doing business for short- term profit.
Interview by Tim Gillett @researchinfo
www.researchinformation.info
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