It is a soulless 1960s office block close to the local railway station and with a view out across suburban Surrey. Yet Quadrant House, the Sutton headquarters of trade magazine publisher Reed Business Information, has assumed an unlikely new role.
After a remarkable three years for RBI's parent company Reed Elsevier, Quadrant House is now the creative heart of Europe's largest public stock market-listed media company.
The specialist publisher of scientific, business, legal and educational magazines, including Variety, Flight International and Farmers Weekly, is now valued at more than £15bn - making it the fifth largest media company in the world.
The dog of the media sector three years ago, Reed is now bigger than Pearson, Reuters, and Lord Hollick's United Business Media combined. Its shares now outperform giants including AOL Time Warner and Disney.
And while executives in the media villages of London, New York and Los Angeles still struggle to get their heads around how to make money out of the internet, RBI employees beavering away in a town many disparagingly describe as "Mutton" have contributed to another remarkable statistic: Reed now generates more revenues online than eBay, the US internet auction giant.
Last week, Reed told the City that despite dire conditions across the media sector it was sticking to its earnings targets. The reason? Although the economy is tough, subscriptions are holding up and only 12% of profit comes from advertising. The news was issued by Crispin Davis, the former head of media buying firm Aegis, who since taking the helm at Reed three years ago has emerged as one of the most admired media bosses in Europe.
Until he arrived, the publisher, created in 1992 from the merger of UK trade magazine publisher Reed with the Dutch scientific journal firm Elsevier, was best known for executives who seemed more intent on settling old scores than taking on outside competitors.
Davis immediately replaced 11 of the top 12 senior managers and cut 40% of head office staff. "It was necessary to create a business capable of delivering sustained, long-term growth," he says diplomatically.
The group was reorganised into four key divisions - science & medical, education, legal and business - while sales and marketing investment was increased dramatically.
"Before we migrated information online, a scientific researcher would have to get on his bike, go to the library, sign out books and ride home to complete a piece of work. Now with a subscription to our products he can access the equivalent to three miles of academic journals from his PC at home."
What has crucially changed is the way Reed publications are produced by its 6,000 UK staff. Kelly's directory, a red hardback business book published each year since 1978, evolved into Kellysearch.co.uk, an online reference facility attracting a far wider audience than before and significant advertising revenues.
New Scientist is no longer just a weekly magazine with a circulation of 140,000, but a website breaking news and claiming 1.2 million unique users each month. Around £100m has also been invested in Science Direct, a site that groups more than 1,500 scientific journals in a single place and is expected to attract up to 350m page views this year. A further £350m has been spent turning around legal reference resource Lexis Nexis. Once a declining business, it now accounts for one third of Reed's revenues.
Crucially, users are prepared to pay for the content, even though most information available on the internet is free. "As long as the information we produce is high quality and helpful to the job our customers do they will pay, but we are not sitting on our laurels," says Davis.
Eventually he wants to do the same with educational books and products but believes that for now, in the school classroom, text books will retain precedence over the internet. "Electronic teaching will continue to grow from a low base but until there is a computer at every desk it will only be a complementary method to traditional textbooks," he says.
Davis is relatively unconcerned by customers who might think they can drop their subscriptions and find similar information for free using search engines like Google and AOL. "You can get a wide amount of information free of charge on the web, but if you want truly high quality content that helps you do your job then your best bet is to subscribe to the likes of Science Direct and Lexis Nexis."
The reliability of its subscription revenues has made Reed the media sector's safe haven in this economic downturn. Quadrant House may not feel glamorous to those who work there, but as long as advertising remains in the doldrums, investors believe there is no better place to be.
