GROWING UP

With the over 45s segment representing a $23.5 billion annual spend opportunity, Grownups is well positioned to give marketers access to that audience. 11 years since founding it, co-founder and general manager Richard Poole reflects on the website’s chapters and what it’s achieved. CAN YOU EXPLAIN GROWNUPS AND HOW IT CAME TO BE?

In 2004, I met with Shane Bradley and our shared affinity for the older market surfaced. He’d spent time at a retirement village owned by his family and I’d learned at university that there was an impending wave of baby boomers turning 50 between 1996 and 2014.

With that knowledge, we decided to start an online magazine for the 50+ audience. It would be a unique content hub, social club and brain-training hub, with great products and service offerings, through which we would inspire people to make the most of every day.

In 2006 it went live and today, it has a community of 115,000 members, of which 57,000 receive a weekly email newsletter.

THIS YEAR GROWNUPS TURNED 11, WHAT HAVE BEEN THE BIG MILESTONES OVER THE YEARS?

I’ve inevitable certainly lows, found however,the businesssome highlightsa roller coasterhave been: ride, with so many highs and the

• Doing what we said we’d do: starting, surviving, persisting, growing, celebrating • Regularly receiving feedback about how much we’ve helped change people’s lives • Having Sentinel buy 20 percent of the business before we launched • Turning a genuine profit within the first couple of years, whilst paying market salaries

• Buying back the 20 percent from Sentinel in 2008, then entering into a JV with Yellow Pages later that year, just prior to the GFC

• Surviving the GFC • Buying back 60 percent from Yellow in early 2012 • Selling 100 percent to Cigna in 2016