Securing Career at Gardner Business Media—A Dream Come True

Employee Spotlight Profile

Eduardo Tovar, Editor-In-Chief
Modern Machine Shop Mexico

In 1997, I waited at the train station in Bremen, Germany with Rick Kline Sr. for the train that would take us to Hanover to attend EMO. I told Rick I would like to learn Gardner’s work process and, if possible, do an internship of a few months at their company. Without hesitation, he told me I was welcome and that I had an office there whenever I wanted. So, in June 1998, I came to Cincinnati to stay at GBM until I would attend IMTS in September with the whole company. It was a great experience that led to even better opportunities.

At the time, I was the editor-in-chief of Metalmecanica, a magazine aimed at the Latin American metalworking sector. With Gardner Publications, as GBM was called at the time, we had an agreement in which GBM represented us commercially to sell the magazine’s advertising in the United States, and I would reproduce MMS articles in the magazine I edited.

Since I started my work as Metalmecanica’s editor in 1995, GBM adopted me as a member of its team when I traveled to the shows in Europe and the United States, and I even shared hotel rooms with MMS editors like Tom Beard and Mark Albert. I remember telling my wife that I loved the atmosphere at Gardner and the professionalism they worked with, and that I would like to work there.

That wish came true in 2014.

Metalmecanica’s parent company, the Carvajal Group, began to sell its publishing business and I saw that specialized magazines were no longer of interest to the company.

Again, Germany was the crucial place where I spoke to Rick Kline Sr., telling him that the most likely outcome was Carvajal selling the magazine or closing the business. At the end of the DMG conference at EMO 2013 I told him that panregional magazines were no longer a working business, since advertisers were only interested in three countries in Latin America: Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

Brazil has several specialized manufacturing magazines that had already achieved market saturation. Argentina also has a well-known magazine that covered the market. But, surprisingly, Mexico did not have any magazines in the metalworking industry and needed good technical information. That is how the idea of a magazine for Mexico began to roll, and a few weeks later I got a call from GBM’s Travis Egan.

Travis told me that the idea of creating a version of MMS for Mexico caught their attention and that they wanted me to work on the project with an old acquaintance of mine: Claude Mas. Claude contacted me to ask about the Mexican market and to set up the structure of the business. Finally, we met in Cincinnati in January 2014 to present the project. Weeks later, Travis called me back and told me I would start work in June 2014.

An important part of my work in Mexico is to visit plants and machine shops to experience and learn what technologies they apply in their companies and what their needs are. This was the last visit I was able to make to an aerospace company in March 2019, before the restrictions on travel and plant visits due to the pandemic began. The company is Frisa Aeroapace in Monterrey.

I did, and after hard work with Claude — visiting associations, suppliers and key contacts in Mexico — we were able to build a good readership and hire key employees in sales, marketing and audience development. That is how Mariana Guerrero, Angela Restrepo and Guillermo Fernandez came to the company, a team we worked with for the first two years. Later, assistant editor Mauricio Pineda and digital editor Angela Castro joined the editorial team of MMS Mexico. Today, the team has 18 employees and we are the top magazine in Mexico for the metalworking and manufacturing sector.

It has been hard work, and we have faced many challenges, but we are sure we will overcome them with the great team we have in Mexico. My family has been tremendously supportive, patiently understanding my absences due to frequent trips and showing their love and commitment as my wife dedicates herself to her medical research and my children excel in their studies.

Today, looking back, I am happy to still see so many people I had the good fortune to meet in the Cincinnati office during my stay in 1998: Rhonda Weaver, Bill Caldwell, Ernie Brubaker, Steve Kline, Maralah Rose-Asch, Todd Luciano, Mark Albert, Tom Beard and the entire Kline family. Today my dream of working in this company has come true and I can say with full knowledge that GBM is a family.

About the Author

Eduardo Tovar

Eduardo is the editorial director of Modern Machine Shop México. With more than 25 years experience in the metalworking industry, he has had the opportunity to meet industry leaders, attend global manufacturing conferences and events and write about applications across the industry in Mexico. Eduardo covers manufacturing sector news in Mexico, and major events in the United States, Europe and Asia. He has served on the editorial boards of the industrial Latin American magazines Metalmecanica, Petroleo Internacional, Reportero Industrial and Trade Shows in Print. Eduardo has fostered relations with industry associations in Latin America and Mexico and organized events and conferences aimed at the region’s manufacturing industry. He has degrees in Social Communication and Journalism.