In 1997 I was persuaded to take over as editor of Cranes Today magazine. I had been writing for a leading UK civil engineering magazine for the best part of a decade; the crane industry was not one that I knew well. However, I was ready for a new challenge and Wilmington Media, the then publisher of the magazine, had recently floated on the London stock exchange and seemed a company that was keen to go places.
Cranes Today was already a longestablished, well-respected and much-loved publication in the industry and I was gently advised not to introduce too many changes. I heeded these words as best I could but struggled somewhat with the diversity of the readership.
That the magazine went to more than 100 different countries energised me; but the diversity of how readers used their cranes exercised me. I could see little connection between a company operating a rental fleet of truck-mounted mobile cranes and a manufacturing company using an overhead crane to move assembled components around a factory workshop. My growth plan for Cranes Today was to spin out different publications for different vertical niches. Cranes Today would be targeted at those companies whose core business was owning and/or operating cranes, predominantly in the construction sector but also in energy and other infrastructure markets.
I envisaged separate publications for factory cranes and container handling port cranes, and perhaps some kind of ‘lifting logistics’ publication for the transport sector.
I was not entirely clear in my plans as I was still very much learning about the nuances of the different industries within the world of cranes. However, as I began work on Cranes Today’s token annual EOT feature, it became apparent to me that overhead travelling cranes did not belong in the magazine I was editing.
It was left to my colleague John Hopley, the advertising manager, to make Hoist work as a commercial proposition. We were unsure at first, but John gathered enough support from key advertisers for us to set out on what began as a quarterly publication.
It was only once we had a publication targeted at industrial users of EOT cranes that we began to discover what a good idea it was. The market was far bigger than we had imagined, and far more diverse. Advertisers who were not drawn to Cranes Today found Hoist a much more compelling proposition.
I started out blissfully ignorant, thinking that the EOT crane industry comprised companies like Demag and Kone making cranes and companies like Ford Motor Company and British Steel buying them and using them in their plants. I confess I had little idea what on earth I was going to put in this new magazine.
As we learned about the sector, we learned about all the adjunct technologies and specialists in control system, and about the supply chain that connects the Demags to the Fords. And it was in the supply chain that Hoist found its market.
Having vaguely thought, in a haze of blissful ignorance, that overhead cranes were designed, produced and installed by company A and bought and used by company B, I rapidly learned that, in most cases, each crane was a custom installation with many more parties involved. The crane builder might also be a hoist manufacturer, but more likely it was not, instead using offthe- shelf components (as far as possible) from perhaps several different manufacturers, purchased via intermediaries.
There was also an entire industrial sector of crane servicing, maintenance and repair crews. The industry, I learned, was about lifting technology and engineering, equipment manufacturing, and distribution & marketing of commodity products.
We initially thought we were launching a magazine for overhead crane users. In fact most users have remarkably little interest in their cranes, so long as they work. And the individual end-users have little purchasing power so were no great draw to advertisers.
The magazine met a need we did not know existed in a part of the business we did not know existed. We spread the word about the goings-on of the big companies and the development of little-known brands to crane builders, service companies, distributors, agents and middlemen around the world.
We also found an industry in considerable flux with plenty to analyse and discuss. The Hoist years have seen consolidation and globalisation in the industry.
To what extent we contributed, I cannot presume to say, but I am certain that the magazine has benefitted from it. Consolidation has diminished the advertising based but increased the appetite for information. Rumblings in Hyvinkää can be heard around the world. There was always plenty of interest among readers for corporate developments among the major manufacturers, for it is from such changes that opportunities grow. When a big hoist producer is taken over by a rival, for example, somewhere there is a distributor whose business is threatened unless it can find a new supplier. In 1998 the internet offered little help. Hoist magazine was responsible, albeit indirectly, for many international introductions.
And there were many changes of ownership among the manufacturers in the early days of Hoist. Columbus McKinnon had already taken over Lift-Tech and Yale (including Coffing, Little Mule etc). But there was much more M&A activity to come. Within months of the launch of the magazine, Harnischfeger sold P&H – one of the grandest old names in industrial equipment – to venture capitalists. In the years that followed came new owners for Morris Material Handling (both in the USA and the UK through separate routes), Demag, Stahl, Shepard Niles and Noell, to list just some of the bigger names.
Some companies in the crane industry did not particularly welcome having the Hoist spotlight shone on them and preferred to maintain their privacy. Most, however, were exceptionally helpful and patient as we fumbled around in the early days trying to get under, and into, the skin of the industry. I am grateful to them and hope we achieved it.
