VIEW PUBLICATIONS: THE STORY

Just after midnight on 9 January 1988, I was boarding flight KL 0898 from Hong Kong to Amsterdam. Behind me I could hear a flurry of voices calling out, ‘You’re mad! You’ll never make it! But goodbye and… good luck!’ I had been attending an advertising conference in Guangzhou, China, with fellow speakers from established European newspapers and magazines, and I had cheerily told them that, having worked
for others for 14 years in textile publishing, I wanted to be my own boss and that I was launching Textile View magazine. Not only that, I wanted to revolutionise everything that had been done or seen before in B2B publications. I wanted to create something that people would regard as the bible of textiles; I wanted to create a magazine that not only informed but also broke new ground in graphics.

Of course, I was completely mad. This was not the time of indies but of structured publishing houses,
which had large editorial offices and even larger sales teams. I wanted none of this. I was going to follow the lead of fashion, which was busy outsourcing production and revolutionizing the traditional 18-month pipeline of fabric to the high street.