In today's business briefing Robyn and Simon discuss a book publisher's expansion, the sale of a popular podcast producer and the launch of the North West Young Professionals Awards 2025.
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00:00Book publishers, chicken wings, young professionals and the next generation on
00:05the stock market. That's what's coming up in today's Daily Business Briefing.
00:16Hi, I'm Simon Keegan, I'm the editor of the Northwest Business Insider. And I'm Robin
00:20Hewson. Hi Robin, so I believe the story that you spotted for us today is
00:25something that's kind of close to my heart. Absolutely, yeah, well seeing as
00:29you're an author, apparently there has been a big shift back towards people
00:34wanting physical copies of books rather than ebooks and things like that. Great
00:37news, great news, music to my ears. Yeah, so this has been reported by book publisher
00:41Hachette. So they've got a base in Oxfordshire and they're expanding their
00:45site to have over 300,000 square foot of kind of manufacturing facilities to meet
00:51this increased demand. So it's a really good thing for the region because it's
00:54going to create up to 50 local job opportunities and for Hachette it's
00:58helping their ambitions to be providing one in every two books that are sold in
01:04the UK. So yeah, really big ambitions from them and they currently
01:09ship 65 million copies from that facility already and obviously this is
01:12going to increase further. Well that's good because you would think maybe in
01:15the modern era people are just getting their books on like Kindles and things
01:19like that. So it's really good to know that people still want to
01:23hold a physical thing isn't it? Yeah, well I think even on you know with young people on
01:26TikTok and things there's a lot of like booktok and trends of everyone having
01:29the physical copies of books so maybe that's where you need to start. I'm nodding as you're
01:33saying booktok as if I know what I am. Well this is where you should be selling your
01:37books on TikTok. Well you say that but there's something else which I
01:41know about which is chicken wings and this is an interesting story. Have you
01:48ever watched Hot Ones? Yes, the interview series. Yeah, so for our viewers that
01:52are not familiar, Hot Ones they interview somebody, they interview a
01:56celebrity and throughout the interview they have to eat progressively spicier
02:01chicken wings and then by the end they're just dying aren't they? Yeah. Well the people who
02:07own Hot Ones which is called First We Feast, it's actually BuzzFeed and
02:14they are selling it for 82.5 million dollars to a consortium even by Soros
02:24Fund Management and BuzzFeed say it's a strategic shift away from lower margin
02:31content producers. I just reckon they couldn't handle the spicy chicken wings
02:36anymore. Anyway, so from books to chicken wings what's next Robin? Next up is young
02:43professionals, so not much of a segue there is it? No, but yeah the
02:49Northwest Young Professionals Awards are open for entries. This is something we
02:53do every year isn't it, to celebrate young business talent across the region.
02:56So if you're aged 35 and under then you should be getting your entries in. Yes.
03:01And we've got categories of all different sorts of sectors, so we have
03:05property, law, marketing, things like that and then we also have a few new
03:09categories this year. So there was a few sectors that we weren't quite
03:12reaching, so we want to do manufacturing, young manufacturing professional of the
03:16year, so that's a new one. We also have young entrepreneur of the year, so that's
03:22anyone who started their own business, 35 and under, so that should be an
03:26interesting one. And we've got a new venue as well haven't we? Yeah we have, so we had
03:30really great demand for the awards last year, so we've actually upgraded to a
03:34bigger venue this year and it'll be at Manchester Central where we have our
03:37dealmakers and property awards and things like that, so really great venue
03:41and yeah, bigger awards than ever. That's fantastic and real opportunity to
03:46celebrate that young talent within people's organisations. Yeah exactly, so if
03:49you've got any young people in your organisation or you want to nominate
03:52yourself and then get your entries in before the 6th of February. You've still
03:55got a few years haven't you? Absolutely, loads of years. Well talking of young talent, one of
04:01our 4242 alumni, Mark Deschanais, he's doing something to try to bring in the
04:08next generation of young talent to the city, to the stock market. Now with him,
04:14when he was at school he started playing the stock market. What he would do is, I
04:18think in between lessons or possibly when he should have been in lessons, he
04:22used to go to a phone box outside the school and actually you know, I
04:27think he used his dad's account, Mark's dad if you're watching, I'm sure he's
04:31sorry, to use his dad's account to kind of play the stock market and now what
04:36he's doing is he's going into schools including Manchester Grammar and some
04:42of the girls schools and he's running like competitions where the young people
04:46can see and in some cases they're doing better than the pros. Oh wow, amazing. Yeah and so what he
04:52wants to do is increase the kind of diversity in the city because I don't
04:56think generally the stock market is viewed as being all that diverse but so
05:00by going into schools in the north and going into girls schools and things like
05:04that hopefully it will increase the diversity and already it's a great
05:08success. Some of them are going on, have gone on to top jobs, some of the alumni
05:12of these schools so that's a really interesting one so check that one out
05:16definitely. That's all we've got time for today isn't it? I think it is. Well thanks for
05:21joining us and you can see all of these stories on insidermedia.com and why
05:28not give us a follow on LinkedIn as well?