Decision Media News is Officially a "Gazelle"

By Ross Tieman

The cultural fusion at Decision News Media is palp­able. English and Irish accents on the newsdesk contrast strangely with the palm trees and umbrella pines visible through the windows. Read original article.

On a wall in the company's sweeping new office, at Le Belem, in the neo-classical town of Montpellier in southern France, is a framed certificate signed by Renaud Dutreil, France's small business minister. It declares DNM a "gazelle", one of the 2,000 fastest-growing small and medium businesses in France. But next to it are awards for the editorial excellence of its websites from Britain's Periodical Publishers Association.

Montpellier, more than 1,000km due south of Europe's publishing hub in London, may seem an unlikely home for an English-language online publishing business.

But then Franck Metzger and Jean-Marc Cogogne, the company's founders and joint managing directors, are hardly conventional entrepreneurs.

It is their peculiar blend of French planning, business school thinking and thorough grasp of British business methods that has en­abled DNM to thrive.

Both grew up in southern France, then met in Lille at the Institut d'Administration des Entreprises in 1991. They were classmates on a masters prog­ramme in international marketing, part of a government programme to equip budding French executives to sell French exports in UK markets. But after their obligatory six-month posting to British firms, the government plan went awry. "Most of the people who started on the course with us fell in love with the UK," says Mr Metzger. Degrees in hand, the pair, now firm friends, high-tailed it to London.

London was buzzing, both culturally and economically, and it was easier to find a job there than in slow-growth, high-unemployment France. "I bought the Evening Standard and got a job the next day," says Mr Metzger. "It couldn't have happened in France."

They stayed for seven years, Mr Cocogne as manager in a company making point-of-sale displays for the cosmetics industry, Mr Metzger as an advertising manager for business-to-business magazines, and then a newspaper. They acquired a profound respect for the primacy of the customer, flexible labour markets and the agility businesses need to survive.
But after the birth of their first children, they decided to move back to France.

Our wives had to give up their jobs, as soon as you have a child, many of the advantages of a big city become inconveniences.

Mr Cocogne.

Today, DNM runs 22 dedicated B2B news websites. The stories are written by a team of 14 journalists in Montpellier, plus others in main markets. Foodnavigator.com, DNM's first news site, is now the dominant source of innovation news worldwide for food industry managers. The stable has ex­panded to cover food production and packaging, dairy, confectionery, bakery, beverages, laboratory equipment, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

In addition, DNM sends out half a million newsletters to executives in these industries each day, giving it a valuable database in the industries it covers. In 2007, it generated sales revenues of €4.3m, up 40 per cent on 2006. For a company that started with €10,000 of the founders' savings only nine years ago, that is quite an achievement.