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In its 40-year history, entrepreneurship and innovation have been the hallmark of Group C’semergence as a full-service provider to the site selection community. Today, Ed Coene’s originalformula for success still guides the development of a dynamic brand with international reach inprint, online and unique events that are essential components of successful project development.

When he decided tojump into the pub-lishing business afterserving his country

in the Korean War, Ed Coene had aclear-eyed vision of what he neededto do to carve out a lucrative niche inthe trade-publishing sector.

Ed looked at a batch of classifiedannouncements of available com-mercial properties and saw thepotential for a comprehensive maga-zine that would provide corporatesite selectors everything they neededto know to make their expansion,relocation or new facilities decisions.In a small collection of property list-ings, he envisioned a powerhousedirectory that could serve as theWho’s Who of economic develop-ment and site selection.

You are holding in your hands aphysical manifestation of Ed Coene’svision. Our flagship, the 2011 SiteSeekers’ Guide, is the industry’s mostcomprehensive stand-alone eco-nomic development directory, your

primary tool for navigating the site-selection universe. The SSG, alongwith monthly issues of Business Facil-ities and Today’s Facility Managermagazines, two thriving and innova-tive websites, and a series of uniquebusiness-to-business events anchoredby our highly successful LiveXchangegatherings—all stand as monumentsto the goals that Ed set for Group Cand the road map he gave us toachieve those goals.

GIGABYTES OF SHOE LEATHERWhen he started out in 1969,

Ed had a confident determinationthat old-fashioned shoe leather and forward-thinking ideas ulti-mately would be rewarded by suc-cess. He also knew that he didn’twant to be a cog in someone else’spublishing machine.

After a brief stint at Fairchild Pub-lications, Ed developed a successfulsteel trade magazine he named 33,after the SIC code for primary met-als. The pub was a big hit, but the

fledgling publisher did not have thefunds to maximize its potential.McGraw-Hill provided an infusion ofcash, but then exercised its rights tobuy the magazine. Although a cushyjob at the publishing giant based atNew York’s glittering RockefellerCenter was part of the package, itonly took about six months of sittingamong the suits on Sixth Avenue forEd to decide that he could achievesomething greater on his own.

“I was an entrepreneur. I couldn’ttake the bureaucracy,” Ed recalls.“And, frankly, I thought I couldmake more money on my own.”

Ed found a partner and startedpublishing a series of industrial buy-ers guides, which he described as“mini-Thomas Registers.” Just as theenterprise began to build up a headof steam, Ed’s partner defected to theactual Thomas Register, leaving Edwith the task of repaying the loansfrom the buyers guide venture.

Undeterred, Ed took over thestart-up American Industrial Proper-

FEATURE STORYBy Jack Rogers

ties Report and molded it into Busi-ness Facilities magazine. He raisedhis sights from industrial buyersguides and produced the firsttruly national economic develop-ment directory, which he calledthe Site Seekers’ Guide.

“I knew if I got the right typeof salesperson, we could create asuccessful monthly publication,”he says.

Always the innovator, Edstayed ahead of the curve andembraced the looming digitalrevolution long before his printcounterparts ended theirembrace with linotype. In1983, a year before Appleunveiled its first Macintosh,Group C already was writingits own proprietary software

package for publishing. In 1986, thecompany took the lead in digitizingits in-house typesetting and graphicsdivision. Ed also computerizedGroup C’s telemarketing division, or,as he puts it, “used our databases tocall our readers and set up appoint-ments” with the advertisers.

“We tried to do everything withcomputers,” Ed remembers. “Wejumped in, even if we didn’t com-pletely understand it. There was noemail at that time, but we pickedup a few machines and hookedthem together and it was great.Our salesmen liked it so much,they wanted to sell the program,but by then everybody was outthere with software.”

But if you distill Ed Coene’s recipefor success to its essence, the coreprinciple has nothing to do with

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“Our goal is to makecertain that every meetingat LiveXchange is produc-tive. I think we have met

that challenge.”—Ted Coene

“I was extremely lucky tohave a father who

believed I could do what-ever I wanted, whether Iwas male or female.”

—Susan Coene

In 1994, the Asbury Park Press profiled Group C in a feature headlined “Trade Publisher Survives The Lean Years.” The photo that accompanied the profile shows Ed, seated, at work with Susan and Ted Coene.

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technology—and everything to dowith relationships.

“It’s all about cultivating people,”he explains. “We used to have about10 advertisers from a bunch of littletowns around Orlando, Florida, andevery year we would go down thereand have a luncheon with everyone.They became our pals and they all ranads. The other books didn’t do that.”

To grow the company, Ed supple-mented the core magazine with abevy of local contract publishing ini-tiatives. In 1987, Group C boughtNew Jersey Meeting Planning Guide,an annual publication touting con-vention hosting opportunities in NJ.In 1992, the company launched adirectory division, combining the NJMeeting Planning Guide with itsfirst regional directory, the Mon-mouth County Business to BusinessDirectory. The division also pub-lished an economic profile for Som-erset County and TradeLink, anexport guide for Public Service Elec-tric & Gas Co., and it developedpublications for the Delaware RiverRegion Tourism Council and threeseasonal pubs on fishing and huntingfor the state Department of Environ-mental Protection and Energy.

While Group C was able to sup-plement the income from sponsor-paid publications by selling advertis-ing, the risk inherent in products tiedto elected decision-makers in stateand local government was hammeredhome in 1992, when a new governordecided to hand Group C’s contractto produce the state Department ofTravel and Tourism‘s New JerseyTravel Guide, a $500,000 revenue-generator, to another publisher.

Ed realized that Group C couldn’tthrive being so closely tied to thepolitical landscape. “It was diversifyor die,” he says.

When diversification came toGroup C in the late 1980s, it was anew generation of Coenes leadingthe charge.

THE NEXT GENERATIONEd is literally and figuratively the

founding father of Group C. Now“semi-retired,” Ed’s mantle of lead-ership in the company has beenpassed to his son, Ted, and daughter,Susan, who today are co-presidentsof Group C Media. Both of theCoene siblings have inherited theirfather’s tenacity, entrepreneurialspirit and appreciation for theimportance of innovation.

When Susan joined the familybusiness in the 1980s, female execu-tives were greatly outnumbered bytheir male counterparts in U.S. busi-ness and had to cope with the preju-dice of low expectations. Withouthesitation, Susan chose to make hermark in a decidedly “un-feminine”sector: she created Today’s FacilityManager magazine in 1988 andmade it an indispensable benchmarkfor corporate executives responsiblefor equipment purchases and capitalexpenditures for their firms.

Giving men purchasing guidanceabout the nuts and bolts of heatingand ventilation systems and othermundane facilities needs was notexpected from a woman in thosedays, and Susan quickly realized shewould have to bring her “A” game.She brought in other female pio-neers, including TFM editor Heidi

Schwartz (who joined the companyin 1989), and TFM set out boldly tochallenge perceptions.

“We had to act like men,” recallsSusan, who began her career as theonly woman in a 50-man unit atHearst Publishing. “I had to belly upto the bar, and be as tough as a man.”

Five years and numerous 25-per-cent growth cycles later, TFM hadfirmly established itself as the leaderin the field. Susan credits Ed Coenewith giving her the grit to persevere.

“I was extremely lucky to have afather who believed that I could do

male or a female,” Susan says. “That ishighly unusual in a man from his gen-eration. He told me you get out thereand you’ve got a job and you’ll work.”

Today, Susan is putting Group C’sinnovative credo to work to navigatethe rapidly evolving opportunitiesoffered by online publishing and theemerging phenomena of social net-working. Under her leadership, TFMis moving quickly to make its prod-ucts available in the rapidly emergingmobile Internet market.

Ted Coene cut his teeth on theNew Jersey-centric contract publish-ing initiatives that formed the core ofGroup C’s business in the late 1980sand early 1990s. Then, as ExecutivePublisher of Business Facilities, Teddeveloped a dynamic diversificationstrategy that today is referred to inter-nally at Group C as “the three-leggedstool:” print, online and events.

Ted built upon the magazine’sestablished brand equity as a leadinglocation adviser by moving into theonline venue with the BusinessFacili-ties.com website. Then, in the early

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whatever I wanted, whether I was a

2000s, Ted engineered a concept hebelieved would revolutionize the tra-ditional business-meeting regime oftrade shows and costly business trips.

“I walked around at the big tradeshows and saw state and local eco-nomic developers spending an inor-dinate amount of money to maintainhuge booths at these shows. I didn’tthink some of these vertical showswere the right place for them to be,”Ted recalls. “For example, thechances of finding a scientist roam-ing around the BIO show who alsoneeded a new facility location waslike finding a needle in ahaystack. There needed tobe a more targeted way forthe economic developmentcommunity to meetprospects.”

Ted created a process to vetcompanies in target industriesto determine if they had proj-ects and were willing to look at a vari-ety of locations. “We had to overcomethe understandable tendency of com-panies to keep their projects secret, andwe had to make sure they weren’t lim-iting their search to a small area,” henotes. “The key was to find peoplewho were earlier in the game, who werecommitted to relocating or expanding,but had not narrowed their search toone particular state.”

In 2005, Ted’s concept came tolife in the first Business FacilitiesLiveXchange event, held at theChateau Elan in Braselton, GA. Atthe first gathering in Georgia and thefive annual LiveXchange events thatfollowed, site selectors with pre-certi-fied, job-creating projects foundthemselves face to face with eco-

nomic development representativesfor the primary locations across thecountry they were scrutinizing fortheir new facilities.

LiveXchange’s unique opportu-nity for three days of intense, up-close discussions and dealmaking in acomfortable resort setting—supple-mented by timely and informativepresentations and seminars fromindustry leaders—was embracedfrom the outset by participants as theone event that clearly gave themmaximum return for time invested.

Ted amplified the LiveX value

proposition by developing a propri-etary software program that cus-tomizes each participant’s itineraryon a minute-by-minute basis andmakes sure that the best-matchedpartners come together.

“We ensure that we are efficientnot only with the time spent at theevent by participants, but also interms of who they are meeting with,”the Group C co-president explains.“Our goal is to make certain thatthere is not one meeting at LiveXthat is not productive. Every meetinghas to be productive for both partiesinvolved. That’s the challenge, and Ithink we have met that challengewith LiveX.”

Today’s LiveXchange now bringsto the table key players from a wide

range of high-growth industry sectorswho are preparing to make capitalinvestments approaching $1 billion,creating thousands of jobs with over-all payroll topping $100 million.

THE NEXT 40 YEARSDespite the hardships that have cut

across the economic landscape sincethe fall of 2008, Group C is approach-ing the future with optimism andconfidence that a firm foundation isin place for future growth.

“With LiveXchange and our otherproducts, we have created a template for

the type of business processes thatare going to become central tosuccessful development movingforward,” Ted says.

“In the economic develop-ment world, the discussionshave to take place at a higherlevel than simply handingsomething out at a booth at a

trade show,” he says. “You really needto have more elaborate communica-tions, and LiveXchange does that.”

TFM also is developing a series ofevents that seek to streamline thebusiness process with an emphasis oncost-effective meetings. The newTFM Forums will be one-day,regional events that bring buyers andsellers together without travel orhotel costs associated with traditionalshows. “It’s eight hours, 10 to 15appointments, three sessions and alifetime of relationships,” Susan says.

Surveying the beehive of activityat Group C, Ed Coene exudes confi-dence that the next 40 years will be asproductive as the last. “We’ve gotsome pretty good young peoplehere,” he says with a smile.

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