Publishers bought for £3m

12:17pm Thursday 2nd October 2008

An Oxford-based academic publishing company has been bought by Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury in a £3m deal.

Bloomsbury will pay £2m initially for Berg Publishers, which pioneered the concept of fashion theory.

Another £1m could be paid if Berg, which employs 15 staff in St Clements, gains enough subscribers in 2014 and 2015 for its online service Berg Fashion Library, a database of fashion to be launched in 2010.

Bloomsbury chief executive Nigel Newton said: "The acquisition of Berg is an important element in our strategy to increase our presence in academic publishing and take advantage of a market that is already benefiting from electronic delivery and print-on-demand."

Bloomsbury is diversifying following the loss of Harry Potter income, and launched a new academic division on September 5, focusing on humanities and social sciences.

Berg, also known as Oxford International Publishers, was set up in 1982 and bought from its previous owners in 2003 by managers Kathryn Earle and Sara Everett. Ms Everett is no longer involved.

Revenue for the year to December 2007 was £1.58m.

Ms Earle said: "In 1997, we launched an academic journal called Fashion Theory, which was phenomenally successful. We noticed that there was a gap for an online resource in fashion. We wrote a business plan, and that's the story."

She is staying on and said staff would continue to work in the St Clements offices. "Basically, it's business as usual."

As well as fashion, Berg built its name through in anthropology, cultural and media studies, film, food, design, interior design, textiles and visual culture. It publishes large introductory textbooks and readers, textbooks and general books, cutting-edge monographs, desk-top and library reference and journals.

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