Virgo Publishing Acquires Food Product Design Magazine

Virgo Publishing Acquires Food Product Design Magazine

PHOENIX—In late October, Virgo Publishing acquired Northbrook, Ill.-based Food Product Design magazine, the leading publication in the food ingredient and flavors industry. Food Product Design operations will remain in the Northbrook office, with Bob Weeks maintaining his role as publisher, Lynn Kuntz continuing in her position as editor, and Michael Leonard as national sales manager.

“Food Product Design will continue to fulfill its mission of delivering practical, use-it-now, take it to the bench editorial to those in the food industry who are involved in developing products for the retail, foodservice and functional food markets,” said Bob Weeks, publisher of Food Product Design. “The prospect of bringing Virgo Publishing’s capabilities and experience in the areas of trade shows, conferences, information systems and electronic media to bear on the Food Product Design franchise is very exciting. It will allow us to further solidify Food Product Design’s position as the industry’s leading product development content and information source while significantly increasing value to both our reader and advertiser audiences. I am truly excited about the future of Food Product Design as a part of the Virgo Publishing family.”

Virgo Publishing produces more than 18 business magazine titles and eight trade shows and conferences. The Health & Nutrition division of Virgo Publishing publishes Natural Products INSIDER and HSR: Health Supplement Retailer magazines and produces the largest event for the nutritional ingredients business, SupplySide. SupplySide, launched in 1997, produces two shows per year, SupplySide East and SupplySide West. More than 750 booths for nutritional ingredients are on display at SupplySide West, making it the largest show in the world for the supplement ingredient industry.

“Acquiring Food Product Design is an important part of our plan to expand our reach beyond serving the supplement ingredient market into the food ingredient side of the business,” said Jenny Bolton, president of Virgo Publishing.“We currently have a growing readership and attendee base from the food ingredient business, and this merger will allow us to expand more quickly into the food segment of the market. As consumers continue to seek foods with healthy and functional ingredients, the aligning of business media covering supplement ingredients and food ingredients is natural. This acquisition positions us perfectly to take advantage of the growth both these markets will enjoy in the future.”

Food Product Design will become part of the Health & Nutrition division of Virgo Publishing under the leadership of Peggy Jackson, director of publishing. Jackson stated, “We are ecstatic to join forces with the Food Product Design team. The synergy of our two groups uniting will bring great value to all of our readers, advertisers and industries. This will make our already successful magazines, events and communications services even better.”

Positive reaction from the industry greeted the announcement. “As DSM Nutritional Products has strong relationships with both Food Product Design and Virgo Publishing, we see Food Product Design as a perfect complement for Virgo, helping to expand its presence within the food and beverage markets,” said Lynda Doyle, director of business development, DSM Nutritional Products. “As the world’s leading innovator of specialty ingredients for the dietary supplement, food and beverage markets, DSM Nutritional Products sees the new Virgo acquisition as creating an even stronger opportunity for us to create greater awareness within these key markets.”

Paula Nurnberger, marketing manager at P.L.Thomas, agreed the development was a natural fit. “Food Product Design is one of the premier publications for industry professionals in the food and beverage development area,” she said. “The editorial is well researched by experienced writers and experts, with a top-notch inhouse team. As the food and nutritional arenas are increasingly crossing over in the ‘functional foods’ and supplements areas, the meshing of these two professional organizations is a fantastic move.”

Virgo Publishing, founded in 1986, is based in Phoenix, and produces leading business-to-business titles and trade shows/conferences in the telecom, medical, health, lifestyle and light industrial industries. Virgo Publishing, a diversified business media company, employs more than 130 talented individuals.

Year Founded: 1991
Frequency: Monthly
Circulation: Approximately 30,100

Readership: The majority of Food Product Design readers are directly involved in product development in the processed foods industry, including research and development (R&D) scientists and chefs, food process engineers and sensory scientists, as well as management. Others who read the magazine for an understanding of the concepts and trends in the food industry include professionals who work

in basic research, quality assurance/quality control, marketing, packaging and purchasing. These people work throughout the industry at retail giants, such as Kraft Foods, Tyson and Unilever, or for smaller entrepreneurial companies, like Frontera Foods; at food-ingredient suppliers, such as ADM and Cargill; and at foodservice chains including McDonald’s, Panera Bread Company and Yum! Brands.

Editorial Focus: Food Product Design is committed to satisfying the informational needs of people who design new and reformulated food products for the retail and foodservice markets. It is the magazine written for food product developers by the insiders and experts—we know what kind of information you need, and we know how to deliver it in a way that is informative, timely, useful and reader-friendly. While the main focus is on ingredients and formulation, we bring together information that bears directly on the R&D function, such as nutrition, processing, packaging, testing and analyses, quality and trends.

Publisher: Robert Weeks Editor: Lynn A. Kuntz
Managing Editor: Douglas Peckenpaugh
National Sales Manager: Michael Leonard
Midwest Sales Manager: Bonnie McColl

Natural Products INSIDER brings you this Q&A with the publisher of our new sister publication, Food Product Design. Robert Weeks started Food Product Design in 1991 and has been at the helm since that point.

His seasoned staff of professionals on the sales, editorial and design team have helped build the magazine to the market leading position within the food ingredient arena.

Robert Weeks: During the mid to late 1980’s, the business-to-business food industry publishing arena was dominated by several magazines that can best be described as classic horizontals, i.e., all things to all disciplines both editorially and in circulation. At the same time, because of the growing importance of technology in product development and, therefore, the emergence of the research and development (R&D) function as the driving force, control and decision maker in the selection of flavor and ingredient systems and product, flavor and ingredient advertising exploded to where it represented fully 50 percent of ad space and—since almost all flavor and ingredient ads were four-color—close to 60 percent of ad dollars. This created an imbalance where the majority of ad pages and dollars were coming from flavor and ingredient suppliers, but on average the existing magazines devoted only 15 percent to 20 percent of their editorial to subjects touching on flavor and ingredient applications.

I became acutely aware of a growing discontent among both flavor and ingredient suppliers (advertisers) and the general R&D community (readers) that the existing magazines were not satisfying either of their needs. It occurred to me that there was a great opportunity for a new publication that would devote 100 percent of its editorial content to satisfying the R&D community’s informational needs, which would also automatically create the near perfect environment for flavor and ingredient advertising—complete focus for both advertisers and readers with no waste. It seemed a perfect situation where there was a strong need in both the reader and advertiser audiences for a new magazine—Food Product Design!

Weeks: Food Product Design stands apart from other food publications because of its editorial mission and how it is executed. The mission has not changed from the beginning: “To be the leading food industry publication delivering practical, use-it-now, take-it-ontothe- bench product development information to those individuals who are involved in designing and developing food and beverage products for the retail, foodservice, and functional foods markets”. What really makes the mission a reality is the “voice” that our editors and writers have established, which is held in high regard for its easy reading, “conversational” tone combined with the highest credibility with our readers built up over 15 years. Basically, our readers and advertisers know, “If you read it in Food Product Design, you can believe it!”

Weeks: I have been approached by several suitors over the past several years, but I always broke off the conversation very early on as none of them convinced me that they either truly understood my “baby” or would take good care of Food Product Design after I might leave several years down the road. In Virgo Publishing, I found a company that more than satisfied me on both those criteria and, as an added bonus, Virgo’s capabilities in the areas of trade shows, seminars, electronic communication, Web site development, electronic buyers guides and more will give us tremendous opportunities to build the Food Product Design franchise in a number of ways to further increase our already great value to both our readers and advertisers. The future looks very exciting.

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines