Durrants Ltd Information

Ever since we were founded in 1880, Durrants has continuously developed new ideas and services to help our clients work smarter. 1880s: William Durrant and Henry Romeike founded The Press Cuttings Agency, the forerunner of Durrants. Their clients are mainly aristocracy and members of parliament. 1890s: In 1891 Durrant and Romeike decided to part ways having built the foundations of the British press cuttings industry. Renamed as Durrant's Press Cuttings, the company moved its operations to Southampton Row in Holborn where the business began to blossom. 1940s: The offices were damaged during the Blitz, which prompted a move to the Old Street area of the City of London where we remain to this day. The post-war era was dominated by demands for faster delivery of cuttings sourced from a greater range of publications. Durrant's was the first to employ full-time couriers to deliver cuttings to clients in central London. 1950s: By the 50s Durrant's had become internationally recognised, helping in 1953 to found FIBEP, a federation of like-minded international press-cutting organisations working together for mutual benefit. Durrant's continues to play a leading role in FIBEP whose conferences, staged in member countries all over the globe, are indicative of the industry's large scale growth. 1970s: Driving change to meet demand Durrant's introduced manual sorting in 1975 which allowed clients to create "virtual pigeonholes" to group their cuttings. The process of sorting cuttings into pre-determined categories has since become a central element of our service and the industry as a whole. 1990s: A change of ownership (the first in over 100 years) heralded yet more change, as Durrants became part of the Discovery Group. The first computer system designed expressly for handling cuttings was installed and as part of the rebrand we dropped the apostrophe from our name. A dedicated client services team was also introduced which has proved to be one of our biggest draws ever since. 2000s: By the millennium Durrants was on the rise again. Recognising that traditional practices would struggle to support our rapid growth led to a radical rethink and a management buy-in by a new team with a wealth of experience in B2B publishing. Under their leadership Durrants has once again taken its position at the forefront of a rapidly changing industry, exploiting and developing digital technology to provide clients with the highest level of service. Our rise in the 2000s culminated with our acquisition of Metrica in 2009. Metrica is the global leader in PR measurement and analysis, which enabled us to improve our integrated offering to our customers. 2010s: Durrants continued to grow with further acquisitions and investments. In 2010 Durrants acquired Gorkana the UK's leading media contact database, therefore enabling our customers to have best of breed media planning, monitoring and analysis all through one service.