Booking a place among top print firms

(Left to right) Dan Mesnage, Mary Egan, Gerard Reid and Paul Carter are excited about the possibilities for Pindar NZ.

Photo/ Dean Purcell

Story from New Zealand Herald today.

It's an offer many small New Zealand businesses can only dream of.
When UK-based print and media company Pindar bought digital typesetting company Egan Reid, they asked founders Mary Egan and Gerard Reid, "how big can you grow?"
"What they said to us was `if we give you unlimited resources, what can you do with it?'," Egan says.
Now newly rebranded as Pindar NZ and moved into spacious new offices on Great North Road, the 18-strong firm is gearing up to triple in size by the end of next year. It expects annual turnover to increase from the current $1 million to $7 million in two years.

Egan Reid had developed a speciality in creating software solutions for complex publishing projects. One of the recent jewels in its crown is the first Australasian edition of Mosby's Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing and Health Professions, a mammoth 2500-page, full-colour encyclopedia it produced for international science and health publisher Elsevier.

For the full story, and it is an interesting and exciting one go to the NZ Herald website.

FOOTNOTE:

This is a story of particular interest to the book trade in New Zealand because Gerard Reid has been involved in the industry since 1975 first as a bookseller then as Executive Director of the Book Publishers Association for 12 years and since then working with his wife Mary Egan at Egan Reid, now Pindar NZ.

Gerard was running the Book Publishers Association during the three years Bookman Beattie spent as President of that body and I always valued his wise and considered counsel on many issues, particularly in the issues of copyright, an area in which he is hugely knowlegeable. I rate him the lay expert on the subject in New Zealand.

I offer my congratualtions to Gerard and Mary; developments like this do not happen by accident. Rather it is as a result of their determination, enterprise and goal setting along with constantly keeping themselves abreast with digital and other developments in their specialised field.

Bravo ! Bravo !

A brief bio of Gerard follows:

Work History
Jan 2007-present, Pindar NZ, Managing Director
June 1991-Dec 2006, Egan-Reid Ltd, Joint proprietor and Chief Executive
May 1979-May 1991, Book Publishers Association of New Zealand Inc., Executive Director
Jan 1975-Apr 1979, All Things Catholic (bookseller), Proprietor
Jan 1970-Dec 1974, Alex Harvey Industries, Senior Research Officer and later Marketing Services Manager
Feb 1966-Dec 1970, Kerridge Advertising Ltd, Market Research Executive and later General Manger

Positions held
Councillor, Book Publishers Association of New Zealand Inc. (2 years)
Chairman (founder), New Zealand Copyright Council, (4 years)
Executive Director (founder), Copyright Licensing Ltd, (4 years)
Councillor, Book Marketing Council, (10 years)
Deputy Chairman (cofounder), Publishers' Promotional Fund, (2 years)
NZ delegate, International Publishers Association, (13 years)
NZ delegate, International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations, (13 years)
Alternate Chairman, Education Department/Publishers Liaison Committee, (12 years)
Chairman, Point Chevalier School Board of Trustees, (5 years)
Councillor, NZ Market Research Society, (3 years)
Councillor, Sales & Marketing Executives, (2 years)

Mary Egan and Gerard Reid have been married since 1981 and business partners since 1991. They have three grown-up children, two of whom (Anna and Sophia) work for Pindar NZ.
Mary's training and early career was as a librarian, then she worked as a book buyer and cook with Gerard in the late 1970s. In 1987 friends who recognised her eye for style asked her to learn desktop publishing and produce their publications.

After six months of intense self-training, Mary started commercial production on her Mac SE. Over the next 4 years she developed considerable expertise in producing magazines and trade directories.
In 1991 Gerard joined Mary in the business and turned it into a book production specialist. Mary had the technical and design skills, while Gerard had a wide knowledge of the book industry.

In the years since then, Pindar NZ has produced thousands of publications - from children's books to scientific journals - for more than 100 publishers in New Zealand and overseas. Many of the books have won awards, and for three years in a row Pindar NZ was named one of New Zealand's top 100 exporters.
UK Based
As the New Zealand Herald story shows Pindar NZ is now acting as Pindar worldwide's centre of excellence for publishing and software development centre for publishing-related tools and services.

I should also add that Gerard's late father was Professor John C. Reid, (1916-72), a leading Catholic layman and professor of English at the University of Auckland. He was a noted scholar of the Victorian period of literature and had a number of books published in this area as well as about New Zealand writing and culture.