News in View: John Menzies IT chief defends 'clicks and mortar' tie-up

NEWS Distribution firm, John Menzies, has defended its decision to partner with online counterpart, magazineshop.co.uk. Earlier this month, John Menzies made an undisclosed but "significant" investment in magazineshop.co.uk, making the website its internet service for magazine subscriptions. In this week's News in View, Frank Coyle, IT director of John Menzies, explains that his company did not have the inhouse expertise required to build the business. He said: "We chose to look very carefully for a company with whom we could enter into partnership, someone who was already active in this area and successful." Daniel Squirrell, CEO of magazineshop.co.uk, said his company brought more to the table than just internet experience. "Being a small company, we tend to be able to react very quickly and make sensible business decisions rapidly, as opposed to a large organisation that takes longer in the decision-making process," he said. Paul Freegard, head of ecommerce at Pagoda Consulting, approved of the strategy. He told silicon.com: "It provides a way for John Menzies to extend onto the web before someone else takes its market share." But Duncan Chapple, analyst at Ovum, said the move is too little, too late from John Menzies. "What they've done is much less than what WH Smith has done, and much later. They've also made a decision that really dilutes their brand by trading under someone else's name." John Menzies' Coyle insists that magazineshop.co.uk needs the partnership every bit as much as John Menzies, and that his company's strategy will be copied by many businesses around the UK. He added: "Small dot-com companies are in danger of going out of business themselves without these partnerships. Unless they get into partnership with a solid business, they'll go to the wall." You can watch the full News in View programme in the Retail Channel (http://www.silicon.com/a38258 ).