Company's secret

The Secret of the Company was created by Yuri Katsman in October 2001 ^[3] as a monthly supplement to the weekly magazine Money, Kommersant Publishing House. The application arose to cover business seminars conducted by the publishing house in collaboration with the Higher School of Economics and Harvard Business School ^[4] . Later, when the publishing house no longer needed an application, Katzman and partners bought out The Secret of the Company and since September 2002 they began to publish the magazine at first twice a week, then - on a weekly basis. In 2004, a publishing house was created on the basis of the magazine, which also produced the newspaper Business and the magazines You Have the Right and Everything is Clear. In November 2005, Publishing House "Secret of the Firm" purchased the online edition Gazeta.ru for about $ 7-10 million ^{[5] [4]} .

Since the spring of 2006, the publishing house has been looking for buyers for its unprofitable publications (the revenue of ZAO Secret of the Company under RAS in 2005 was 216.75 million rubles, the net loss was 323.56 million rubles). On December 22, 2006, it was announced that the Business newspaper was bought out by the Moscow News group. The amount of the transaction, according to experts, was about 5-6 million dollars, while in the fall, Rodionov Publishing House planned to buy the publication for 10-13 million dollars ^[6] . On the same day, a deal was closed with Kommersant, which bought out the remaining editions. Former owners - Cube Capital UK Limited investment fund (70%), Alexander Loktev and managing director Yuri Katsman - received about $ 40 million ^[7] . In 2007, the new owner closed the “You have the right” and “Everything is clear” magazines, and the “Company Secret” was transformed into a monthly magazine ^[5] .

For a long time Kommersant published two competing publications: “Money” and the less popular “Company Secret” (according to TNS Russia in March - July 2014, the Russian audience of publications was 238 thousand and 193.3 thousand people over 12 years old for one number, respectively) ^[5] . Moreover, the latter had lower profitability in 2013–2014; it generated a loss on annual revenue, according to Vedomosti , of about 60 million rubles ^[1] .

In 2014, Kommersant received an offer from an unnamed company to buy a publication; after a while, Rambler & Co showed interest in the transaction. On November 14, 2014, negotiations between the two holdings began ^[1] , on December 25 it was announced that the deal had been completed ^[3] . Rambler & Co gave 10 million rubles for the brand “Secret of the Firm” and the right to use the electronic archive of the magazine in publications, according to Vedomosti sources. Then it became known that the December printed issue of the journal will be the last ^[8] (circulation in November 2014 - 65,000 copies ^[1] ). It was assumed that the publication will remain part of the business team. However, Marina Ivanyushchenkova, chief editor for 13 years, decided not to go to Rambler & Co. At the end of the month, it became known that the publication may be headed by Look At Media editorial director Nikolai Kononov and that several people will move to a new job with him from the July 2014 Hopes & Fears business magazine ^[9] joined the urban news site The Village.

Already on January 12, Kononov and four key editorial staff moved to the "Secret of the company" ^[8] . Subsequently, the entire team of Hopes & Fears, with the exception of chief editor Anna Sokolova and editor Yuri Bolotov, went into the new project ^[10] . According to Kononov, a series of decisions by the holding’s management prompted the departure from Look At Media: first, merge H&F with The Village and thereby close the business publication, which has gained around 800 thousand monthly audience in a year and a half, and then use the brand for a new English language lifestyle editions ^{[11] [8]} . The updated edition of The Secret of the Company did not include Kommersant journalists, with the exception of Nikolai Grishin, a long-time journal employee ^[12] . The publication exists as an independent unit within Rambler & Co ^[10] .

On March 19, 2015, the site was restarted on the new secretmag.ru domain. At that time, 14 people were working on the “Firm Secret” ^[2] . Then the editors announced plans to release more than 20 materials daily ^[2] . Monetization is planned due to media and contextual advertising, as well as special projects ^[10] . In February 2016, the publication became one of the sites on which Rambler & Co, together with MTS, tested paid advertising disconnection ^[13] .

By September 2017, the monthly audience of Firm Secret was 1 million readers. September 25, it became known about the reduction of employees from 15 to 5. The reason for the reduction was the failure to break even . According to Vedomosti , the budget of the publication was cut four times. The publication planned to abandon the publication of news, leaving articles, columns and longreads , which, as stated, will be written mainly by invited authors. The new chief editor was Daria Cherkudinova, Nikolai Kononov moved to the position of editorial director and planned to focus on the development of the site ^{[14] [15]} . In April 2019, a new editor-in-chief, Philip Vuyachich, was appointed, previously holding another position at Rambler & Co, the editor-in-chief of Afisha .

• Ekaterina Dementieva. Poster Magazine: Nikolai Kononov on the new “Firm Secret” (neopr.) . daily.afisha.ru. Date of treatment September 18, 2016.
• Nikita Likhachev. Guest TJ: Nikolai Kononov (Neopr.) . tjournal.ru (March 20, 2015). Date of treatment September 18, 2016.
• M. Spiridonov. Nikolay Kononov, editor-in-chief of the business publication “Secret of the Firm” (neopr.) runetologia.podfm.ru (May 13, 2015). Date of treatment September 18, 2016.

• secretmag.ru - official site of the "Secret of the company"
• A selection of the 20 most popular publication materials in two years