Tim Davies was appointed Managing Director of our new, UK operation in 2018.
Tim is well-known in the British publishing industry, with a strong reputation and an excellent network of industry contacts. His previous roles include Managing Director at The History Press and multiple senior management positions at Oxford University Press, HarperCollins UK, Faber & Faber and others. He is also an executive coach and a mentor on the Independent Publishers Guild’s Mentor Scheme.
Why is Tim so good at being consultative with our UK-based customers? Well, he began his career as a trainee sales representative at Granada Publishing, later acquired by William Collins. From the start, he was aware how fortunate he was to be in the industry, and enjoyed the enthusiasm and passion the professionals around him brought to their positions. Over the subsequent decades, he honed and developed his industry knowledge. Through his volunteer position as a mentor in the IPG, he has returned the favour by helping many start-up ventures with consultation on how best to launch or grow their businesses. It was through our network of British publishers and other industry figures, that a resounding call came back with “Tim Davies”, when we asked who would be a good fit to run our burgeoning UK operation.
In early 2018, Tim came on board in an interim role to help formalise our UK office and grow Westchester’s UK business, which offers editorial and production services to publishers as large as Bloomsbury and as small as those with only a few titles per year. After the 2018 London Book Fair, Tim realised there were significant opportunities to expand in the market, and came on in a full-time role. “I always understood that there is a lot of competition for our services in the market, but that our value proposition is different from the others. Specifically, we’re employee-owned, we’ve been trading for 50 years, we wholly-own our operation in India, and we have an ethical and conscientious approach with both our clients and our staff.” The fact that each client starts with a “kick off” launch meeting with members of Westchester’s senior management team, to essentially freely consult about how best to address their pre-press needs, was very consistent with Tim’s ethos and approach. “We adapt to our clients’ workflow and processes in the early stages, so there are as few surprises as possible during each project.”
Here’s what one of our UK clients says… “Lion Hudson has partnered with Westchester on a content re-purposing programme for our new Lion Scholar imprint and I have been extremely impressed by Westchester’s professionalism and high-quality services. Working with their UK, US, and India-based senior managers on the workflow at the initiation of the projects has been fluid and productive, with conference calls and video meetings arranged as and when needed. Once the workflow was agreed and the individual projects set up, the India-based project management team has consistently delivered high-quality services – providing proofs to the agreed timeframes, and flagging and working with me to resolve any content or file-based issues. Any initial reservations I had on communication challenges and time zone differences were very soon dispelled. We also use Westchester’s India-based proofreading and indexing services, which are also of a high standard. I look forward to working with Westchester on future projects.”
“It’s this approach that resonates well with publishers in the UK looking for a consultative vendor relationship, coupled with the cost savings of using an Indian typesetting or editorial operation. We are growing rapidly and are very proud to have been given the opportunity to support the publishers with whom we work.”