After a highly successful 20-year run, the impacts of COVID-19 have forced Philips Publishing Group to close its doors.
Publisher Peter Philips and his brother Chris grew the company from their flagship Pacific Maritime Magazine in 1999 to 20 titles across a broad array of diversified markets, from commercial fishing and maritime, to tourism and hospitality to its newest title, CruZin, serving the classic-car community.
The Philips stable also included magazines for a dozen local cities and six industry-specific conferences annually. They also had a book-publishing division and produced promotional publications for a variety of clients.
Peter offered this explanation of the circumstances that led to the closure. “We had 14 employees and a sustainable business plan. We were healthy and profitable, and I was enthusiastically optimistic about the company’s future.”
“The first shoe fell on May 1 when the Passenger Vessel Association canceled its 20-year-old agreement with us to publish their monthly Foghorn Magazine.”
“As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed throughout the Spring, it became clear that our ferry clients were going to be operating with drastically reduced service levels through the Summer. We worked with each of them to adjust the annual onboard magazine schedule so that those publications can be used through the 2021 sailing season. We delivered four annual ferry publications prior to the government-imposed travel restrictions, but we will not be publishing new magazines next Spring, which means no new revenue from those magazines through 2021.
“Finally, in mid-June our hotel partners told us they would not be able to provide the space we need to host our conferences, at least through the end of 2020. Combined with the cancellation of our two Spring conferences, this meant we had to cancel our four remaining Fall conferences, losing important additional revenues.
“Our surviving business units do not generate revenue sufficient to keep the company profitable, so we were looking at 14-18 months of negative monthly cash flow. We’re solvent today, but we would not be solvent at the end of that period, so the responsible course of action is to pay our bills and shut the doors.
‘All of our staff members were laid off, effective June 30. Our CFO and I will wind down the business over the next couple of months. It was a sad decision to close Philips Publishing Group, but I know that it was the right decision.”
You can reach Peter at peter.philips@philipspublishing.com or 206-779-2746.