Karen Emanuel
Karen Emanuel is the award-winning founder and CEO of leading music services company Key Production Group, which provides industry-wide project management and specialist packaging for bands including Radiohead and brands such as Ted Baker and Puma.
On top of this, she also owns and runs a luxury nature resort in Central America, the Jicaro eco-hotel in Nicaragua. How does she manage two quite different businesses across two continents? Meet The Leader finds out Karen Emanuel is proof that once you’ve got your foot in the door of an industry you’re passionate about, not much can stop you getting to the top provided you believe in yourself.
In the late-1980s, Emanuel took on the male-dominated music business and set about carefully building her own empire. She weathered the storm when music sales went from physical units to digital downloads, reaping the rewards when vinyl records became fashionable again, and steered her ship back on course to the tune of some £14m a year.
Today, Key, which specialises in the production and manufacture of CDs, DVDs and vinyl LPs, employs 54 people across six companies in four UK offices. The 2018 winner of NatWest’s Everywoman Prize also owns an island on Lake Nicaragua she bought “for the price of a London garage”, with a sustainable hotel on it.
North Londoner Emanuel started out studying Genetics at Leeds University, where she moshed to local goth-rockers the Sisters of Mercy and booked indie bands and DJs. She hadn’t considered music for a career until a friend said, “You love music, why don’t you get into the music industry?” But whenever she’d tell someone she wanted to work in music, the usual response was she’s need to start as a secretary. “I thought, ‘sod that’,” she says, “and I wrote a CV – for the first and last time!” She can still remember her first day at Rough Trade in 1988 when she got the receptionist job. “There was music pounding and there was this vibe that was just <electric>. I barely scraped by on getting the tube in and paying my rent.
But the excitement of being in the industry such a buzz. I just didn’t ever want to leave – and didn’t!” When it came to the entrenched chauvinism, she knew how to handle herself. “I’m gobby! I’ve always been able to stand up for myself.” She knew a lot about music, too, which gave her credibility. “Also, I’m quite lucky, because I know quite a lot about football,” she says. “I’ve been a Tottenham supporter for donkey’s years, so I was able to network that way.”
Crucially, she was also good with numbers. “That’s the geek in me. I was always aware of all the numbers and planned all the time. I did a business course at Goldman Sachs a few years ago, and I was sat there going, ‘Yeah, I kind of learned all this the hard way. It would have been nice to know all of this when I started!’” She set up Key Productions (named after her initials, K.E.) when she was 25 with redundancy money from Rough Trade: “It wasn’t a big gamble. I had nothing. No property, no car, no material stuff to lose, had a couple of grand, and if it didn’t work, I could get another job.”
Emanuel set up Key with no computer amid a flurry of networking during the early 90s. Over the first five years, she went on a big acquisition drive, including a world-music distribution company (“I’ve been quite strategic to acquire companies who can offer something to what we offer”), while keeping up with the changes in technology as well as the renaissance of physical media: “Virtually every release we do comes with a CD – and cassettes are coming back.” There have been tough times: during the 1990s an ex-partner stalked her, stole her cat and set her house on fire. As income dwindled at the height of digital downloads in 2007, she had to freeze wages and fire staff. “A lot of tears. People sticking by me. I bought Think Tank in order to diversify into bespoke packaging. It probably took about four years for me to get back up.”
Around that time, she built a sustainable eco-lodge retreat, Jicaro, after buying an island on Lake Nicaragua: “I’d stayed at another eco lodge and there was nothing else like it.” How does she manage running two very different businesses on two separate continents? “Is it bad if I say wine? I try not to answer emails late at night, or at night, or on weekends. Travelling and going on holiday enables you to have clarity when you step away and look back.”
In a turbulent industry, she ascribes Key Productions’ longevity to her acquisitions, being vinyl experts, and bespoke packaging – her company recently produced luxury formats for Radiohead and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. “We’re good at what we do,” she says. “We’re passionate. We’re knowledgeable. We’ve changed. We go that extra mile for people. I’d like to think that I must be doing something right.” And her advice for women who want to follow in her footsteps? “Follow your heart. And your passion. Know your numbers. Persevere. Build a good team around you. Be good to yourself. Be yourself.”