Faversham House is a £10mn-revenue UK B2B media, information and events company with brands across two main sectors: utilities and sustainability. CEO Amanda Barnes led a management buyout of the family-owned publisher in 2010. Since then, the organisation has moved away from traditional ads-funded, print-led titles to online information, marketing solutions, subscriptions and events.
Barnes joined us this week on The Publisher Podcast to talk through how she led the business through those early stages of transformation, how Covid accelerated some of their more recent changes, and why the idea of brand ecosystems is vital for the next stages.
The initial changes after the MBO in 2010 were cultural. Barnes was clear that she wanted to move away from a dependence on print across the brands. But she found that going from the rhythm that print demands to a more flexible schedule was a big switch for their journalists, as well as commercial teams who were used to selling advertising.
“How do you go from being a print-first to a digital-first organisation? It took us some while, and it wasn’t really until Covid hit that we fully transitioned to digital,” she explained. Faversham House printed its last physical magazine in early 2023.
Creating ‘brand ecosystem’
The next significant shift for Faversham House was making the events part of the brands. Faversham House was experienced in running expos, but brand-associated conferences really came to the fore from 2010 onwards.
Barnes said that there were early lessons in how teams were structured, with the events unit separate from editorial. “The editorial team were interested in the next big idea, not necessarily the next commercial idea,” she said, noting that editors were very good at understanding what their readers wanted, but not necessarily the sponsors. These units were brought together between 2015 and 2016.
“Now we have what we call a brand ecosystem. So that means that the brands are really invested in their events, and they’re really invested in their content, and it’s just a subtle change which has happened over time as we developed.”
Events are closely aligned with the membership offering from each of Faversham House’s brands. Members get special treatment at events, as well as member-only content before, during and after.
Barnes sees events as incredibly important, not just for revenue but for the impact AI is having on publishing. “For us, they are the physical embodiment of our communities and our networks,” she said, emphasising the demand for in-person connections. “They are a really vital stop on the [member] journey.”
Establishing subscriptions
Faversham House was a relatively early mover to subscriptions, having launched a number of brand offerings in 2015. “By the time the pandemic hit, we were already quite established as a subscription publication on the utility side, and it was a very hard paywall,” Barnes noted. “Commercial content would sit outside of the paywall, and [everything else] is within the paywall.”
However, there have been some learnings with the rollout across different brands and audiences. Barnes pointed out that in utilities, the information they provide is very necessary and more straightforward to present as a value exchange to potential subscribers as part of their jobs:“What we do is we give [subscribers] that deep dive, and we also tell them what everybody else is doing and what it will mean. It’s very legislation and regulation driven.
Faversham House then initially followed the same model for ita sustainability brand EDIE. But Barnes said the offering didn’t initially resonate: “It wasn’t the information they wanted [necessarily]. They wanted the peer-to-peer and community. A lot of sustainability professionals work in isolation, and often feel very lonely. They’re very committed and passionate about what they do, and they need other people to keep themselves going.”
This helped fine-tune the membership proposition, and crucially the marketing for it. Now, Barnes said the membership offering on EDIE is much more successful.
Amanda Barnes will be speaking at Monetising B2B Information & Events 2026 on a panel about events and information strategies. Join us at Stationers’ Hall, London on 13th May but hurry – there are only a few tickets remaining.
Barnes shared that memberships now account for approximately 12% of total revenue at Faversham House. The events are a much larger contributor, bringing in between 60-65%. But she emphasised that this isn’t necessarily a reflection of value. Instead, it’s everything working together which helps it all grow.
“When you have a big exhibition at the NEC [in Birmingham, UK], it’s a big amount of turnover. It’s a big part of your business. But every bit is important. That ecosystem idea is really key for us. Everything in the end comes back to those members, that audience. Even if they’re not the biggest part of our revenue, it’s satisfying them which allows us to play in all these other fields.”
Continuous change
This ecosystem approach is one Faversham House is using to strengthen their future propositions. It is currently trying out AI tools to help understand their audiences better across what content they read online, to what they go and look at at an exhibition: “All of these things build up a bigger picture of who we’re talking to and what they need,” said Barnes. “That’s obviously very commercially valuable, but that’s first party data that nobody else has, because it’s unique to our ecosystem. That, I think, is where we will differentiate ourselves in the years to come.”
Barnes believes events and expos are much more resilient to AI disruption. The pandemic showed the extent to which people needed human interaction, and she doesn’t see AI completely replacing vital buyer-seller relationships, of which in-person events are a catalyst.
She does, however, think events need to lean into tailored experiences, including making them more pleasant and interesting places for people to be: “This year we are spending a lot more on Utility Week Live, which happens in May. We’re spending more on how it looks, how it feels, what’s on offer food-wise. We’ve always been really good at producing fantastic content that normally we would charge for, and is given away free. But there’s now a lot of emphasis on making the experience really fun, otherwise people won’t come.”
This doesn’t always mean bringing in DJs or ‘festivalisation’. It comes back to understanding what the audience wants, and how you as a publisher are best placed to serve that need. For Faversham House, centering its members and building events and products around them is key to ensuring they’re staying focused on those needs.
Listen to the full session above, or by searching ‘The Publisher Podcast’ on your podcast app of choice.
