Type: Private Company
Address: Vognmagergade 11, Copenhagen K, DK-1148, Denmark
Telephone: (+45 33) 30 55 50
Fax: (+45 33) 32 19 02
Web: http://www.egmont.com
Employees: 3,782
Sales: EUR 1.24 billion ($1.9 billion) (2006)
Incorporated: 1878 as P. Petersen, Printers
NAIC: 511120 Periodical Publishers; 511130 Book Publishers; 512110 Motion Picture and Video Production; 512120 Motion Picture and Video Distribution; 512191 Teleproduction and Other Postproduction Services
SIC: 2721 Periodicals; 2731 Book Publishing; 7812 Motion Picture & Video Production; 7822 Motion Picture & Tape Distribution; 7829 Motion Picture Distribution Services; 7819 Services Allied to Motion Pictures
Egmont Group is a leading media group in the Scandinavian market and one of the largest in Europe. The Copenhagen-based company publishes magazines, books, and comic books; produces and distributes motion pictures and television programming; is active in broadcast television and movie theater operation; develops advertising; and manages book clubs, among other activities. Egmont's operations are grouped into seven primary divisions. Egmont Magazines' flagships are family-oriented Hjemmet (Home), the women's magazine ALT for damerne (Everything for Women), and celebrity gossip weekly Her & Nu (Here & Now). Egmont produces local editions of these titles for most of the Scandinavian markets. The company also produces men's magazines and more than 80 special interest magazine titles. This division represented more than 15 percent of Egmont's EUR 1.24 billion ($1.9 billion) in 2006 revenues.
Egmont Kids & Teens is the Scandinavian regions's leading publisher of youth-oriented magazines, comics, games, and other products, including mobile services. The largest part of this division is its comic books production, led by longtime flagship Donald Duck, under license from Disney. This division produced over 14 percent of the group's sales. Egmont Books, accounting for 16 percent of sales, includes Danish publishers Aschehoug, Alinea, Forlag Malling Beck, as well as Damm, present in both Norway and Sweden. The company's publishing operations focus on fiction and on the youth market. This division operates book clubs and, since 2006, the chain of Tanum bookstores in Norway. Egmont has been a prominent film producer and distributor since its merger with Nordisk Film in 1992. That division produces and distributes motion pictures and television programming; operates its own chain of movie theaters; produces games for the PlayStation; and since 2006 owns 50 percent of record company The Music Business Organisation. Egmont also owns 50 percent of TV2 Group, which operates six channels in Norway. The company's Egmont International division includes the company's operations in central and Eastern Europe, the United Kingdom, China, and elsewhere. This division, focused on youth-oriented book and magazine publishing, generated 22 percent of group sales. In all, Egmont is present in more than 23 countries. The remaining division oversees the company's Charitable Activities, which include the Nordisk Film Foundation and Egmont Højskolen adult schooling project. Egmont is controlled by a privately held family foundation. The company is led by CEO Steffen Kragh.
Flyswatter Start in 1878
Egmont H. Petersen was just 17 years old when he launched his own printing business in Copenhagen in 1878. Petersen had just finished a four-year apprenticeship. With few employment opportunities at the time, Petersen had little choice but to attempt to create his own business. In this, he was aided by his mother, Petrine, a seamstress, who put up all of her belongings, including her pots and pans and especially her sewing machine, as collateral against Egmont's purchase of a printing press. Because Petersen was underage, his business was placed under his mother's name. The company remained known as P. Petersen up until Egmont's death in 1914.
Petersen's first press was of the so-called flyswatter type. This type of press was operated by hand and capable of producing only one sheet, with just one color, at a time. Petersen launched his business in the kitchen of his mother's boarding house. By day, he went about Copenhagen drumming up business, and printed at night for delivery the next morning.
Petersen's skill at highly decorative typography and borders, and his insistence on high quality, helped his business prosper. Within a year Petersen had completed the purchase of the press. He then moved into a dedicated print shop, adding new machines and hiring his first employees in 1880. The company's continued expansion led to several more moves. By 1895, P. Petersen employed 25 people. Petersen himself had earned the nickname of "Kunst" (Art) Petersen, for the quality of his work.
Part of the company's growth came from its commitment to adopting new technologies. In 1892, the company became the first in Denmark to print in color. This commitment continued into the next century. In 1919, for example, the company later became the first in the country to install offset printing machinery.
By that time, the company had moved to still larger quarters, in a building dubbed Gutenberghus after the inventor of the printing press. The first phase of construction was completed shortly after Egmont Petersen's death in 1914. By then, the company, which had been placed under the ownership of the Egmont H. Petersen Foundation, had changed its name to Gutenberghus.
Home Magazine Success in 1904
Part of the reason behind the name change was that the company was no longer simply a printer. One of the company's major clients at the dawn of the 20th century had been the magazine Damernes Blad. The women's weekly was quite small, with a circulation of only 2,000. In 1902, the magazine's publisher went out of business, and Petersen, as its primary creditor, took over control of the magazine. By 1904, the company had transformed the magazine from a women-oriented title to a new family-oriented format called Hjemmet (Home). The new formula was an instant success and by the end of the year had seen its circulation rise to 24,000.
Hjemmet quickly became the cornerstone of a fast-growing magazine division within the company. By the time of Petersen's death, its circulation had topped 100,000 in Denmark. The title remained the company's flagship throughout the century and into the next. It also provided the company with its first international expansion. The company added a Norwegian edition in 1911, and by 1921 had introduced a Swedish version as well.
The next phase of Gutenberghus's growth was led by Jens Christian Petersen (no relation to Egmont). I. C. Petersen, as he was known, introduced a more business-like orientation to the company, targeting greater efficiency. As part of that effort, the company launched several new areas of operation, including its own advertising agency, as well as a paper warehousing business. I. C. Petersen also changed the company's focus from a small number of large-scale customers, to a larger number of smaller customers.
Under I. C. Petersen, Gutenberghus grew into Denmark's leading printer and publisher. The company had also moved into a larger, purpose-built site in the heart of Copenhagen. By the time of his death, the company had expanded to include more than 200 printing presses and more than 1,000 employees.
If It Quacks Like a Duck: 1948
Axel Egmont Petersen, the founder's oldest son, took over as head of the company following I. C. Petersen's death in 1944. The company by then had been joined by Dan Folke, who had established an earlier career as a highly popular singer and songwriter. Folke provided the inspiration behind some of Gutenberghus's greatest successes as a magazine publisher. Folke had spent time traveling the United States in the 1920s, and in 1948 he went back to the United States, this time to secure the publishing license for the highly successful Reader's Digest magazine. By 1945, the company had launched a Norwegian edition, shortly followed by a Danish edition. Both became bestsellers for the company.
Folke also led Gutenberghus in the development of its own successful magazine format. In 1946, the company launched the women's format ALT for damerne (Everything for Women), which became the most successful magazine of its type in the Scandinavian region.
Yet Folke's and Gutenberghus' greatest success came with the company's launch into the comic book sector. In 1948, Folke, on his travels to the United States, met with Walt and Roy Disney, and secured the Scandinavian rights to the Donald Duck comic. The new comic was a huge success, and established Gutenberghus as a major force in the youth-oriented publishing market. By 1951, the company had secured the rights to launch Donald Duck comics in Germany and the Netherlands. For this purpose, the company established its German subsidiary that year.
By the end of the 1950s, Donald Duck had a circulation of 140,000 in Denmark alone. The company converted the magazine from a monthly to a weekly. Previously, the company had reprinted storylines developed by the American edition, which remained a monthly. In order to fill the pages of its new weekly edition, Gutenberghus began developing its own storylines. The company formed a new subsidiary for this operation, Gutenberghus Publishing Service. This permitted the company to expand further into the comics market, launching a new series of popular titles through the 1960s and 1970s. The company also launched the highly successful series of pocket books based on Donald Duck and other Disney characters.
Book Publisher from the Sixties
Gutenberghus had by then entered the mainstream book publishing market as well. For this, the company had taken over one of its major print customers, Aschehoug, which neared bankruptcy in 1963. This purchase gave the company a number of new titles, including Flittige Hander and Dansk Familieblad. By the end of the 1960s, the company had combined its comic book expertise with its book publishing operations, publishing the highly popular Asterix series in both Denmark and Germany.
Further acquisitions boosted the company's publishing operations through the 1970s. These included Wangels Forlag and the Danske Bogsamleres Klub book club. The company also expanded its operations into the United Kingdom, founding a subsidiary to publish comic books for that market in 1976.
Further expansion through the 1980s helped boost the company's international operations. In 1984, for example, the company acquired Norway's Damm publishing group. The following year, Gutenberghus bought Franz Schneider Verlag, a children's book publisher based in Munich, as well as Forlaget Litas, which published children's books and operated a chain of retail toy stores.
A major expansion of the group's publishing arm was completed in 1988, when it acquired the Lademann group, which included the Komma, Holkenfeldt, and Sesam imprints. These companies were then regrouped under Gutenberghus's Aschehoug operations in 1991.
Media Group in the New Century
The collapse of the Soviet empire provided the company with new expansion opportunities. Starting from 1990, Gutenberghus established subsidiaries in Poland, Russia, and the Czech Republic. Through that decade and into the next, the company added operations in most of the Eastern European markets.
By then, the company had taken on a new name, Egmont Group. Part of the impetus toward this was its merger in 1992 with Nordisk Film Foundation. That company, which claimed the title of the world's oldest film production company, had been founded in 1906. The company had also established itself as a major producer of television programming. Egmont and Nordisk had previously collaborated on a television broadcasting project, WeekendTV, which had failed to launch in the early 1980s. Instead, in 1992, the newly merged company became founding partners of Norway's TV2 television group. TV2 quickly grew into the country's leading commercial broadcasting company.
By the year 2000, Egmont had parlayed its publishing and broadcasting operations into an extension into the fast-growing new media markets. The company launched its first interactive video game titles, for the Sony PlayStation, at the beginning of the 2000s. By the middle of that decade, the company claimed to be the leading Scandinavian producer of electronic entertainment products.
The company had also continued to expand its international publishing wing. In 1998, the company moved toward the lead in the British children's books publishing sector when it acquired the Children's Books division from Reed Publishing. In 2003, the company merged its Aschehoug and Lademann subsidiaries into a single unit, renamed as Aschehoug. The new company then became Denmark's second largest publisher. By October 2007, however, Egmont moved closer to the lead, following its acquisition of Bonnier's Danish publishing division.
From a single printing press, Egmont had grown into a major European media corporation. With sales of nearly EUR 1.24 billion ($1.9 billion), the company had expanded into an internationally operating company, with a presence in nearly 25 markets. The company continued to set its sights on a new horizon: in November 2007, the company announced plans to establish a U.S.-based children's books publishing division. The company expected to launch its first titles in that market by 2009.
Principal Subsidiaries
Aktsiaselts Egmont Estonia; Aschehoug Dansk Forlag A/S; Dagmar Teatret A/S; Damm Förlag AB (Sweden); Denmark Ejendomsselskabet Gothersgade 55 ApS; Egmont AS; Egmont Bulgaria EAD; Egmont CR s.r.o. (Czech Republic); Egmont Creative A/S; Egmont d.o.o. (Croatia); Egmont Holding GmbH (Germany); Egmont Holding Ltd. (U.K.); Egmont Holding Oy (Finland); Egmont Hong Kong Ltd.; Egmont Hungary Kft. Budapest; Egmont International Holding A/S; Egmont Latvija SIA; Egmont Magasiner A/S; Egmont Polska sp. z o.o.; Egmont Romania S.R.L.; Egmont Serieforlaget A/S; Egmont Specialblade A/S; Egmont Tidskrifter AB (Sweden); Forlag Malling Beck A/S; Mailbox Media A/S; Mailbox Media MBM AB; N.W. Damm & Søn AS (Norway); Nordisk Film A/S; Ny Tid AS (Norway); Skandinaviske Skoledagbøker AS 85% (Norway); Tanum AS (Norway); The Music Business Organisation A/S (50.1%); UAB Egmont Lietuva (Lithuania); Union-Pak A/S; Vagabond Media AB (Sweden).
Principal Competitors
Bertelsmann AG; VNU Business Media Europe Ltd.; Quebecor Inc.; Orkla ASA; Reed Elsevier PLC; SanomaWSOY Group; Axel Springer Verlag AG.
Further Reading
De Laine, Michael, "Egmont Makes Danish Merger," Bookseller, July 4, 2003, p. 9.
Eccleshare, Julia, "Egmont Buys Reed Children's Books," Publishers Weekly, May 11, 1998, p. 15.
"Egmont Acquires Student Calendars Publisher," Nordic Business Report, October 4, 2005.
"Egmont Plans US Unit," Publishers Weekly, November 19, 2007, p. 4.
Holman, Tom, "Egmont Bounces Back with Record Profit," Bookseller, April 5, 2002, p. 7.
Petersen, Jes Dorph, and Soren Kaster, EGMONT 1878-2003, Copenhagen: Aschehoug Dansk Forlag A/S, 2003.
— M. L. Cohen
