practicality that we cannot publish in every language we would like. With that single limitation
and, while we constantly seek ways to improve, we believe we have become pretty effective in
meeting the needs of readers throughout Europe and delivering genuine value to our advertisers.
The combination of our constantly improving capability to provide analysis of what is happening
globally, and the innovation of digital publishing technology, also means that, since January last
year, the magazine has won extensive and growing readership outside Europe, quite literally to
every corner of the world.
Where do we go now? Our main constituency remains the European industry and we are
committed to bringing insights, analysis and news from and about it. We want also to continue to
set standards as a trade publication – this issue is the result of major exercise in upgrading in our
presentation.
The world, though, has grown small, criss-crossed with a web of interdependency that means the
most local of fastener businesses is unavoidably impacted by changes thousands of kilometres
away. Part of our aim is to go on getting better at cutting through some of that complexity and
informing our readership, hopefully to the benefit and improvement of their own businesses. In
that I am now supported by Will Lowry, who joined a year ago as assistant editor. Will had the
unenviable task of getting to grips with the nuances of this industry very quickly. It’s a task he
seems to have survived with remarkable cheerfulness, to become an important office-based
anchor for a singularly peripatetic editor.
My thanks, finally, to all of those companies that have allowed me access to their businesses, and
all of those people that have generously given their time in explaining what they do and what
they see happening in this fascinating industry. If I have managed to bring anything distinctive to
this publication it is the accumulated and concentrated knowledge of all those visits and meetings.
Phil Matten editor
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