Steve Price Joins iSUBSCRiBE as Managing Director

LONDON, October 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

The UK's leading and most comprehensive online magazine and newspaper subscription superstore has today announced key executive appointments to its management structure.

Andrew Burge, CEO of the iSUBSCRiBE group, welcomes Steve Price to the position of Managing Director of the company.

Formerly the Commercial Director and Board Member of Dennis Publishing and Managing Director of ThreePM, Steve brings a wealth of publishing, digital and management experience to iSUBSCRiBE. ThreePM is iSUBSCRiBE's main and direct competitor.

Don Brown has also joined the team in the capacity of Head of Operations. Don was formerly the Business Development Director at ThreePM.

Steve & Don's appointments come at a time when the magazine sector is reporting strong growth in subscription sales, with iSUBSCRiBE's sales performance showing a 25% increase for the 11/12 financial year.

Of the appointments Burge said: "We are delighted that in a tough economy our business continues to grow and we are able to invest in developing our management team further by bringing key executives with incredible pedigree into our business. It is a real coup for iSUBSCRiBE to have such strong experience behind us as we drive the business forward.

"We look forward to an even greater future with both Steve and Don on board," he said.

Privately owned and independently operated, iSUBSCRiBE was established in 2000 and its group of businesses has sold in excess of over £150 million worth of subscriptions.

iSUBSCRiBE has market leading operations in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, and lists over 5,000 magazine and newspaper titles through direct contractual relationships with over 1,000 publishers.

"I am really excited to be joining iSUBSCRiBE at such a key stage of their growth and development," commented Price.

"The vision, passion and enthusiasm of Andrew Burge and the whole iSUBSCRiBE team proved to me that they are going to be the biggest online reseller of print and digital magazine subscriptions and I wanted to be a part of that."

"With iSUBSCRiBE's hundreds of publishing, catalogue and brochure clients under ever increasing pressure to grow their subscription and customer revenues, iSUBSCRiBE are perfectly placed to help them achieve their goals. With an enviable IT infrastructure and ecommerce platform, dedicated staff and a never ending supply of marketing ideas and routes to market, our aim will be to provide them with simply the best possible service to help them grow their subscription and customer bases profitably and successfully. 

"I cannot wait to start working with Andrew and his team as 2013 is going to be iSUBSCRiBE's biggest year ever," he added.

After 6 months gardening leave, Steve Price commences with iSUBSCRiBE on 3 December 2012 and Don Brown has been working with the company since the Spring.

Corporate information can be found by visiting: http://www.iSUBSCRiBE.com

STEVE PRICE - BIOGRAPHY

Steve is a very experienced, results-driven direct marketer and senior director, who has worked in Publishing for over 25 years.

Starting at Europress, a small specialist computer magazine publisher, Steve has also worked at some of the biggest names in UK Publishing, including Future Publishing, Link House Magazines (now IPC Media) and National Magazines (now Hearst Magazines). He also worked for 5 years in mail order and launched a subscription and e-commerce fulfilment company.

For the last 10 years Steve worked at Dennis Publishing, which is generally agreed to be one of the most entrepreneurial and innovative Publishing companies in the UK. During this time he had many different roles but the core was always direct marketing.

When promoted to Direct Marketing Director in 2005, subscriptions generated under £14million and The Week magazine had less than 70,000 subscribers, worth £6million. By building the best DM team in UK Publishing, Steve led the growth of subscriptions which resulted in revenues growing to over £22million by 2011. The innovative work done in this time also led to the team winning over 20 PPA Subscription Awards.

Following some innovative tests in 2006, a conversation with Felix Dennis led to Steve securing substantial investment in The Week magazine. As a result subscriptions grew to over 130,000, which coupled with aggressive price management, dramatically increased revenues to £13million.

Steve was one of the senior Dennis management team and sat on 3 divisional Boards, the Enterprise Board as Commercial Director, a Director of Dovetail Services Ltd, a joint venture between Dennis and BBC Worldwide and Managing Director of ThreePM Ltd.

Three PM is an ecommerce business working as a subscription agent for Publishers. Steve grew Three PM until it became a key business within Dennis Publishing.

Steve conceived the idea for the first consumer digital magazine, which became Monkey with regular weekly openings of over 250,000. He also led the build of a new data warehouse, which ensured that Dennis could maximise their relationship with customers and test new revenues streams such as list rental and lead generation.