Inovva acquires Halifax-based Oyster Group

The Oyster Group, a Halifax-based circulation management and fulfillment company, has been acquired by Inovva, which specializes in web-based data management tools for magazine subscriptions, newsletter recipients, contest entries and event attendees. Oyster Group and its founder Faith Drinnan have been serving magazines in Canada and the United States since 1979. 

Drinnan intends to retire soon and Jennifer Taylor, her vice-president, client services becomes director of accounts at Inovva. The company's main offices will remain in Halifax. 

"This is very exciting news," says Inovva president Brinda Luckoo in a release. "The Oyster Group has an excellent reputation in the publishing industry and we are very keen to bring their expertise to our clients. They are well known as a dedicated, hard‑working group of professionals who have been helping publishers build their paid subscriptions for some 25 years." 

"We spent quite some time looking for the right buyer," says Drinnan. "Inovva has the personnel, the skills and the vision to ensure ongoing growth for the business we started in 1992. The company shares our values and commitment to both clients and staff. Plus, they have the most extensive range of traditional and digital offerings in Canada."

This was the second such acquisition this year.  In January, the company purchased Publish2Profit, a Calgary-based technology company that offers online sales and accounting solutions specifically tailored to the needs of magazine and periodical publishers.

Some Harrowsmith subs being fulfilled by Garden Making

Some 2,000 customers who were stiffed last year by the sudden closure of  Harrowsmith Country Life and who bought their subs through the Rogers subscription service are being sent Garden Making magazine for the balance of their term, according to a story in Mastheadonline.

"Garden Making is a relatively new but already award-winning quarterly magazine directed at Canadian gardeners. The magazine is published by Inspiring Media in Niagara-on-the-Lake, with Michael Fox, a senior vice president at Rogers Publishing, listed as publisher. However, Garden Making is independent and not affiliated with Rogers.

"The letter states subscribers will receive Garden Making for the duration of the Harrowsmith subscription they have already paid for. Following that, subscribers have the option to continue receiving Garden Making for $19.95 a year."

CDS Global fulfillment service lays off 270 staff, closes one facility in U.S.

CDS Global, a division of Hearst Corporation and a major North American provider of magazine subscription fulfillment services, is laying off approximately 270 of its 3,000-member workforce  in Iowa, effective the end of May and is closing one of its facilities in Red Oak, Iowa.

CDS Global CEO Malcolm Netburn told Audience Development that the company has seen a steady decline in the total number of subscriptions served, either from shuttered titles or rate base reductions. The cuts come during a period of dramatic cost containment for magazine publishers. This has trickled down to suppliers. “It’s complicated and difficult to do what we did. But simple for the reasoning.”

There were 44 CDS-serviced titles that shut down last year, he said. At the same time, consumers are increasingly using the Web to order their subscriptions, putting a strain on physical mail processing—a service the Red Oak facility was primarily used for. “We do [mail processing] in six locations. It was strictly a matter of looking at capacity,” says Netburn. He said elsewhere that his company has to change with the times."The people who lost their jobs did not lose them because they weren't great employees," he said. "They lost them because the nature of the businesses we're serving are changing."

Eileen White, spokeswoman for CDS, said “there’s been a major transition in the markets that we work with from paper transactions to digital,” she said. “You can get a lot more done in the digital world with a lot fewer people.”

CDS provides order management, data capture, lockbox and payment processing, and printing and mail management, as well as warehouse, distribution, and fulfillment in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain and Australia.

It's not known what impact the layoffs will have in Canada, where CDS is by far the largest fulfillment provider, with offices in Markham, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec.  One Canadian publisher said that the retrenching by such a major player as CDS Global doesn't bode well for mail-based systems for magazine subscriptions.

Youngblood's PrintAction mags retain CDS Global to handle subscription services

Youngblood Publishing Ltd., the publishers of various graphic arts magazines, including PrintAction and its trade and buyers guides, have hired CDS Global to handle its fulfillment and e-commerce transactions, outbound telemarketing and invoicing and renewals for all subscriptions. Previously and for the past 38 years, Youngblood has maintained its own full-time circulation marketing manager running in-house fulfillment.

Formula titles to be fulfilled by CDS Global

Formula Media Group, a specialty publishers of magazines such as Boating Business, Canadian Autoworld, Carguide, Le Magazine Carguide, West of the City and World of Wheels, has signed up to have its fulfillment done by CDS Global (formerly Indas).

The Beaver outsources to Cornerstone

The Beaver magazine, which until now has maintained its own extensive in-house fulfillment system, has announced that it is outsourcing customer service to the Cornerstone Group of Companies. The arrangement is for both The Beaver and Kayak, published by Canada's National History Society in Winnipeg.

U.S. fulfillment merger makes publishers nervous

There is concern among publishers about the impact of the merger of two of the big three fulfillment companies in the U.S., according to Folio: magazine. Kable Media Services Inc. bought Palm Coast Data for $93 million and the two companies are consolidating. About 75 employees were laid off, most of them at Kable, leading Folio: to note

Palm Coast management will run the merged company, which means that even though it was Kable’s parent company that bought Palm Coast, on the management level the effect is that Palm Coast is taking over Kable.

Kable is a wholly owned subsidiary of AMREP Corporation, (as an aside, AMREP is also a major land developer in New Mexico and founded Rio Rancho, the fourth largest city in New Mexico, and the focus of its current activity "is on the entitlement, development and the sale of land for residential, commercial and industrial uses".)

The nervousness of publishers centres mostly on uncertainties about the software and systems they'll wind up using with Kable/Palm. Kable had converted about 30% of its clients from its NeoData system to something called K-data. That process will probably continue, but some clients may be moved over to Palm's systems.

The other U.S. fulfillment company is Communications Data Services (CDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hearst Corporation, which also owns Canada's largest fulfillment company, Indas Limited of Markham.