Profile - Richard Milbourn

RICHARD MILBOURN

Richard edited Village Voice from 2015 until his last edition, September 2020. The KVCA has been very grateful for the skill and professionalism he has brought to an important role. He has always understood what the Village Voice means to the village and he has helped us greatly to improved the quality, range and profitability of the magazine. Thank you Richard.

Here Richard tells us how he got into this role and what he has got out of it.

The reason I ended up editing Village Voice was all a bit of an accident. I had been producing the Parish Magazine for the Parish of Kingswood for some time when Sir Brian Hill approached me in 2015 about editing Village Voice. We met in Brian’s lovely garden in Kingswood with other members of the KVCA committee and it really felt like the first job interview that I’d had in 30 years. They were keen to understand my history and whether I would be able to take the work on. I explained that I had been in publishing and media all my life with most of it working for myself.

My first job in 1983 was at Reed Business Publishing in Sutton working as a telesales representative on Electronics Weekly and then Computer Weekly. I was there two years before I moved to a small advertising agency in Carshalton owned by Neil Asten, followed by an agency in the West End before setting up my own agency in Sutton. Neil and I decided to join forces and build a publishing business. We could see the growth in logistics across the world and launched a magazine called Logistics Manager in 1994. We also took over a magazine that had already been published for 100 years called Shipping World & Shipbuilder.

After a decade of hard slog we had instant success launching an exhibition at Sandown Park called Logistics Link 2002. It went so well that we were able to launch another show in Doncaster under the same name while also travelling the world to the major shipping exhibitions. Centaur Media bought us out in 2005 and I moved to Centaur to continue work on exhibitions. At Centaur I was given the opportunity of launching The National Home Improvement Show at Earls Court in 2008. It was here that I could expand my love of renovating houses and why we recently moved to a wreck of a house in Sandlands Road, Walton on the Hill.

It wasn’t long before I yearned to be back working for myself and launched my own home shows in Manchester and London. Organising exhibitions is a brutal game when you’re competing with the big boys and when

Southern Home Show held at Ally Pally

CONTIUNUED FROM PAGE 24

Western Boat Show, Bristol

Media 10, who organise the Ideal Home Show, squeezed us out of the venue I had to move in to outdoor shows in the boat and caravan markets.

Hence, getting back into publishing with Village Voice was a pleasant surprise. Up until then the magazine had been produced on a kitchen table and it needed a professional redesign for the first issue which I edited in September 2015. It never ceases to amaze me how dedicated the KVCA committee and all of Kingswood are in contributing to the success of the magazine. There is no question that it punches way above its weight given the size of the community it caters for.

I have really enjoyed working with the committee over 5 years and there’s never been a problem or situation that could not be solved with good humour and common sense. The KVCA who run Kingswood Village Hall and Kingswood Village Voice are such a good example of how a community can come together to improve life in the village and come to anyone’s aid when required – there’s no better example of this than when the whole village pulled together through the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.

Having started publishing Village Voice I then got invited to launch the Tadworth & Walton Tribune and the Banstead Beacon. I also tried the same formula in Cheam, Epsom and Ewell but with less success. With my newfound experience I took over some magazines in Horsham in 2018 and these provided a good springboard to take on magazines in Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill. All these are much bigger productions with circulations of 12,000 rather that the 1,500 to 4,000 circulations of the Surrey magazines I published. However, everything changed with the Lock Down hitting on 23rd March. It was clear the two boat shows and two caravan shows I was organising had no chance of happening. Bookings across the board literally fell off a cliff. I had 36,000 magazines sitting on four pallets in Horsham with no way of getting them delivered and serious doubts about how long it would continue. We moved to distributing via Royal Mail, the only people allowed on the streets and things settled down. But cancellations in advertising bookings made the Tribune and Beacon unviable and I needed to protect my bigger magazines in West Sussex. In addition, because there was synergy between Village Voice and the other Surrey magazines it was logical to make the hard decision to resign as Editor to streamline my operations.

I would like to thank Bob Gunn and the Committee for all their help and support throughout my time on Village Voice and I will always be there to help - especially given that I’m only just across the A217 in Walton. I am very confident that Kate and Juliet will do an absolutely brilliant job and I am sure with the continued support of the community, Village Voice will go from strength to strength and be around for another 40 years generating money for good causes.

Richard Milbourn