The Secret of Bill Curtis' Success

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Dec 1, 2001 by Diane Cyr

The gadget-loving Curtis has shown an uncanny ability to understand the needs of high-end marketers for magazines like Home Theater and Mobile Office. Now, with the acquisition of ultra-upscale Robb Report, the ultimate salesman is attempting to use his publishing formula and a loyal managerial team to build a luxury media empire.

I fever a businessman embodied the company he owns, it's Bill Curtis, the newly ensconced proprietor of the ultra-luxe Robb Report His capacious, leather-appointed Malibu office-complete with floor-to-ceiling humidor, abstract crystal sculptures and flat-screen video monitor the size of a dining room table (all the better for life-size conference calls)--screams conspicuous consumption. It's the perfect workstation for the dolce vita-loving Curtis, a serial entrepreneur who likes to wear a different $15,000 watch each day, ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles with his employees, and hand out $30 cigars to prospective customers.

Now, the 44-year-old Curtis has landed a fitting trophy. "For Bill, [buying the Robb Report] is sort of a reward for many years of working to build publishing companies," says CurtCo Robb Media's senior vice president and editorial director Brett Anderson, who's watched his boss grow and sell (and then sometimes reacquire and sell again) publications like Mobile Office, Home Theater and Sales & Field Force Automation. "To own the Robb Report for him is a real honor. I've worked with him for a long time [12 years] and never seen him as excited as he is about this one. He's often said that if he could own any magazine, it would be the Robb Report."

A spin through the pages of the November issue explains why a man given to carrying aluminum business cards would purchase (with his financial partner, TD Capital Communications Partners) the struggling Robb Report in a transaction valued at about $25 million, and assume another $8 million in debt. In addition to viewing paeans to $97,000 Breuget watches and hip new Harley's the reader can vicariously go on $1.5 million joyrides in classic cars and take a salt rubdown and hot oil treatment to improve his golf game.

Acquiring this guide to the good life is more than a vanity purchase, however. Curtis plans to make the Robb Report the core publication of a luxury-goods multimagazine, multimedia empire. He's already decided to spin off a magazine called the Robb Report Collection, each issue of which will be devoted to a different major category in the parent publication--from automotive to fashion to jewelry. With the eager assistance of his 50/50 partner, TD Capital, Curtis is likely to acquire other vertical titles, explore international growth, and expand into trade and consumer shows. In five years, he expects CurtCo Robb Media to beat least a $100 million company.

To build what would be by far his biggest company yet, Curtis has turned to a loyal crew that has stuck with him for years, and a publishing methodology that upgrades the production values, rejiggers the editorial and sells the hell out of these niche high-end properties. It's a formula that's served him and his backers very well over the years: Since 1993, CurtCo and his investors have spent $29 million acquiring properties and gained $169 million selling them, while the overall return on investment in the past 15 years has been more than 300 percent.

The buyers of his properties have not made out nearly as well. Some, like Cowles Business Media, ended up selling back Mobile Office to Curtis for less than the original sale price, while Freedom Technology still publishes only three of the nine titles it picked up from Curtis two years ago. "[Curtis] has a knack for finding what in publishing we call 'the next sucker,' "says one former CurtCo executive.

Entrepreneurs' creations often falter when transferred to new ownership, however; something of their essence seems to disappear when the founder doesn't come along. And Curtis has proven to be simply more adept at gauging trends and timing than the companies he's sold out to. But his latest grand plan will be the biggest test yet of Curtis' publishing smarts. The luxury market may have been one of the last ad categories to be affected by the downturn, but the events of September 11 have spared no one. "Across the gamut, it's going to be really hard, especially for the luxury titles," says Melissa Pordy, senior vice president, director of print services at ad-buying firm Zenith Media, whose clients include Lexus, Salvatore Ferragamo and Stolichnaya Vodka. "Wall Street isn't paying the big bonuses [this year]. This is really a new economy."

WOOING CLIENTS

To those who know him, Curtis is oddly impassive for a man who so revels in the bounties of affluence. "He seems almost a little cautious about revealing himself, in a funny way for a guy who is as outgoing as he is," says Hershel Sarbin, who did business with him while he was CEO of Cowles Business Media and is still in touch.

But when he's wooing clients, Curtis can out-schmooze and outsell almost anyone in the business. Sitting with Julie Diamond from Executive jet Management at the Monterey Weekend (a vintage car event), Curtis is the model of attentive curiosity; only a jiggling foot betrays some internal gear-grinding as he guides the conversation toward his ultimate goal--getting the company back into the Robb Report as a paying advertiser. "Give me a tour of your company's customer," Curtis urges. "What are the trends you're seeing? Tell me what your hopes are for our relationship."