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BRIAN HICKEY is not your standard - issue spit - and - polish CEO. Actually, the head of Harlequin Enterprises has something of the shaggy dog about him. Casually dressed, he exudes a restless bonhomie as he doodles tight purple swirls on a pad before him. yet there's an unmistakable shrewdness about Hickey that pokes through the good humour every now and again as he talks about this strange business of selling romantic/erotic fantasy stories to women around the world.
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Harlequin is to books what Bata is to shoes -- a recognized Canadian winner in the international bear - pits for mass - produced, brand - name consumer goods. Founded in 1949 by Winnipeg's Richard Bonny - castle as a paperback publisher of reprints, Harlequin began to grow when it started buying rights to category romances (i.e., novels published in series form) from England's Mills & Boon.
IN 1971, Harlequin bought out Mills & Boon, and soon embraced a consumer - goods approach to producing and selling romance novels. Until about 15 years ago, however, Harlequin was just one of several successful category - romance publishers. But in the early 1980s, the company endured a show - down with Simon & Schuster over Harlequin's distribution in the U.S., recruited Hickey from the company that makes Johnson's Wax, and then made a string of key acquisitions, including Simon & Schuster's successful Silhouette romance line (Paramount, which owns S&S, continues to distribute Harlequin in the U.S.).
GENRE DOMINATION
Since then, several category - romance publishers have dropped out of the market, and Harlequin has gone on to establish itself as the dominant force in the romance genre. Its revenues now account for about 12% of net sales of North American mass - market paperbacks (the share is down slightly from last year). Exports to overseas markets -- more than 100 of them -- account for more than half of Harlequin sales. From the mid - 1980s until this year, total revenues have grown by more than 76%, to $443.8 - million in 1993. A member of the Toronto Star group, the firm last year accounted for much of Torstar inc.'s profitability, and its share of the parent company's overall revenue stream (more than...