News

With all the recent doom and gloom in the industry, it's been a welcome relief to report that, after an increasingly depressing roller coaster ride, Butler and Tanner has been reborn.

While Kevin Sarney and his team put in the hard work to rescue the historic firm, from this point onwards B&T will become forever known as the firm rescued by Felix Dennis, the oft-dubbed enfant terrible of magazine publishing.
Equally, while Dennis will be bank rolling the new enterprise, it will be Sarney that has the tough job of returning B&T, if not to the glory days, then at least to a profit.

The complexities of pulling off the rescue will pale into insignificance compared with the challenges that the new company will face from here on in. It seems set on focusing on the colour book market, using the carbon footprint argument as its USP over cheaper overseas rivals. A logical plan, but it relies on persuading book publishers to pay actual cash rather than just lip service to their environmental credentials. No mean feat in the current economic climate.

But then, what do I know? I’ve already blogged to the effect that I was sceptical that the bid would ever get off the ground, and I was wrong then, so with any luck Sarney will prove us doubters wrong again.

And the fact that the new firm will have the full support of its workforce will be a massive boost to its chances of success, after all, until a few weeks ago the 80 workers couldn’t have been hopeful about finding other print jobs in the Frome area.

And as if theirs and the firm’s eleventh-hour reprieve wasn’t drama enough for the print industry, we can now also welcome a character as large as Dennis into the fold.

While we do have a few home-grown mavericks, I can’t think of any that have served time as a result of being found guilty of obscenity charges, are reformed drug addicts, have recorded a single with John Lennon, are highly successful published poets or, most recently, have reportedly killed a man (the latter being something he dismisses as “ridiculous nonsense”).

In short, Dennis is a living legend and as sole-owner of the now rebranded Butler, Tanner & Dennis I truly hope he can help a fellow legend live on for another 157 years.