The following email was sent by James Bunby of Corocharm to Old Pond Publishing on 16th April:
"It is with deep regret that I have to inform you that, following a strategic review, Corocharm Ltd is no longer trading. Unfortunately falling sales, unsold stock, monies owing to us etc has left the situation as untenable. We have tried to resolve as many issues as possible and any further ones will be resolved by the administrators. These will be advised in writing shortly. Naturally I am personally very saddened by this and regret being the latest victim of this recession and for any problems that this may cause you."
We are saddened too. But we are also curious to know the trading position of the company. We still have not been contacted by any administrator. Does anyone know what is happening?
Some background: In the very early 1980s when I published books at Farming Press one of our most succesful outlets was through Farmers Weekly magazine Readers Offers, even though FW was a competitor to the magazines in the Farming Press group. At first I dealt with John Ascoli.
In those days, well before the internet, magazines were keen to add value for their readers with their offers pages. Typically they were run by the subscription department, but used 'spare' advertising space. There could be conflict between the priorities of the two departments. The aims of the Offers could also be unclear: were they to promote the magazines, or were they to make profit? It usually ended up as an uneasy combination of the two.
John Ascoli was succeeded by John Bunby at Farmers Weekly. Then the magazine decided that it would hive off the Offers operation and John was given the opportunity of taking it on as his own business. With his wife Mary and, later, son James, John developed a thriving operation. It continued to be closely linked to Farmers Weekly but extended to other magazines too. Whereas agricultural books and DVDs were the mainstay in the mid-1990s, a decade later profits were coming from items such as tapestry kits.
Corocharm worked this way: the host magazine allocated Corocharm so many pages space in specific months. The host was to be paid a commission on sales generated from the pages. Corocharm approached suppliers to obtain information and images for suitable books, videos and other items for the pages. When the offer appeared, Corocharm received the orders from readers and forwarded the orders to relevant suppliers for fulfilment to the individual customers. The suppliers then invoiced Corocharm for the price of the items (including postage). This invoice was at a quite a high discount in view of the fact that the suppliers were sending their goods direct to readers in ones and twos.
So Corocharm made its living from the difference between the discounted price charged by suppliers and the commission it was paying to the magazines. In good times this must have been very profitable. The advantage to the suppliers was that they had an outlet through Farmers Weekly without having to pay the high advertising charges of a business-to-business magazine. So the suppliers accepted a lower possible final return in exchange for a reduction in risk.
If profits were high for Corocharm in good times, there were also always problems for them because they had no control over the goods they were advertising. In a competitive market they would want to be first among those advertising a good new book or video. But they were working several months ahead, a lead time that seemed to grow over the years rather than reduce. This meant they had to trust the ability of the publisher to publish on time, something that was not always achievable.
A couple of years ago Corocharm extended its operation to take on the CMP magazines such as Farmers Guardian. We also understand that in some instances they began holding stocks and supplying from these; something that was significantly different from their simple early operation.
The Corocharm business fulfilled a real need for magazine readers and countless people involved in farming must have used the service. Our own experience as a supplier is that over the last two or three years the volume of Corocharm orders has been reducing.