Roy Reiman started out as a farm boy. Now he's a philanthropist.

In between, he built "the world's best publishing company you never heard of." That's how Reader's Digest then-CEO Thomas Ryder put it in 2002, announcing the $760 million buy of Reiman Publications.

At the time, seven of Reiman's dozen magazines made the nation's top 100 in circulation: Taste of Home, Quick Cooking, Birds & Blooms, Country Woman, Country, Light & Tasty and Reminisce. The company counted 32 million current and past customers.

One of Reiman's early views was that rural and small-town dwellers needed publications geared to them. He was right.

Taking that idea from inkling to ink, however, took creativity and perseverance. Reiman's unique approach built a sense of community among readers and made a fortune.

"He is a very go-from-the-gut type of guy," Tom Curl, a former Reiman chief executive, told IBD. "He told me . . . before launching a new magazine or business, ask yourself three questions: (1) Can you buy something like it? If so, all you're in is a price game. (2) Do you feel good about doing it? (3) If you watch your expenses you ought to be able to make some money on it."

Finding The Market

Reiman excelled through observation. He'd see a market that other publishers forgot or abandoned — such as when farm magazines, short on ads for their women's sections, dropped those sections to cut costs. He'd produce ways to make a magazine for such a market fly. Then he'd work tirelessly to get each issue out and build the business.

"When Roy found out about 1970 that these (farm) magazines were dropping their home section, he had the idea he'd do a publication for farm women," Curl said. Still, "he realized if these magazines that were existing couldn't sell advertising, then he couldn't either."

Reiman did a little math and determined that Farm Wife News could support itself on subscriptions, if he kept costs low. His magazine empire thus grew, not on ad revenue, but on subscribers' enthusiasm and contributions to content.

What worked for Reiman was innovating in a subject area he knew a lot about: rural life and times. "His leadership and success really boil down to two things: a farm kid work ethic and plain common sense," said Mike Beno, a longtime editor.

Reiman was born in Auburn, Iowa, the youngest of five boys. His dad was a tenant farmer — as Reiman says, a "fixer-upper farmer" — and precise. "Growing up on an Iowa farm has been a big asset to me," he said in an e-mail interview. "It taught me the satisfaction of working hard and seeing the results."

Reiman played baseball in high school. His English teacher got him to edit the school paper's sports section and encouraged him to go to college. But not many local kids did, and Reiman worried he might flunk out — till his brother Ray reminded him: "It's people who don't study and don't try who flunk out."

That's all Reiman needed to hear to reignite his considerable drive. He took a creamery job that started at 4 a.m. to help finance his studies at what's now Iowa State University toward a journalism degree.

The next summer he talked his way into a construction job that already had a full roster of workers. While in school he also sold ads for a printer, started an ad-sponsored campus dating guide and freelanced. One picture he took made it into Life magazine.

After graduation and an Army stint, Reiman's clips helped him land a gig with Capper's Farmer, one of the top three farm magazines in the country. Nine months later, after Reiman spent all night rewording an article to give it more zing, the editor in chief named him managing editor — at age 23.

Reiman went on to work for other agricultural publications, where successful projects stoked his entrepreneurial fire. Once he came up with an idea for a three-ring "here's how" guide for using Harvestore feed silos. He got a $220 bonus, and wondered why that amount. Later, he learned that the guide made $22,000, almost double his yearly pay. His bonus was 1% of net profit, and he'd done most of the work.

So Reiman started a magazine out of the basement of the family house. His wife, Bobbi, helped. They sent the first issue of the Pepperette — for cheer squads — to 32,000 high schools. Alas, not enough subscriptions came in to support the project. Reiman hadn't realized that many schools got magazines free, that teens weren't likely to shell out for their own subscriptions, and that he could've conserved funds by sending out some sample issues instead of sending 32,000.

"Because I knew nothing about the process of testing a new magazine, I went flat-out with a launch across the country . . . and went flat broke as a result," Reiman said. "But I've always looked back at that first failure as my master's degree in publishing. You learn far more from mistakes than successes, and that first bomb paid big dividends when I launched other magazines later on."

Reiman turned to freelancing until he got the next big idea. He learned from a farm roofing supplier that it was hard to get in touch with farm building contractors.

Reiman developed a magazine for this underserved market: Farm Building News. It turned a profit on the second edition.

In the right places, Reiman says in his autobiography, "I Could Write a Book," advertising makes the world go round. But the markets Reiman was most interested in were those orphaned by traditional publishers.

He sold Farm Building News in 1981 for $3.2 million, then started Farm Wife News. It became Country Woman and spun off Farm & Ranch Living. Readers wrote most of the features. Editors would boil those down and, as Reiman said, "sand off the edges." Ideas for new magazines would be mentioned in existing ones, with a call for stories, pictures and reminiscences.

Reiman also boosted his business by developing books from his popular magazine titles. "With Birds & Blooms," Curl said, "by the time we got into it we probably had two boxes of mail to work from."

Simple Plan

Keeping the process simple helped him succeed. He disdained bureaucracy and ran his business like a small firm. "It was incredibly disciplined in its approach to allocating resources, generating new products and maintaining (and) growing existing lines of business," Curl noted. "We just did it differently than other publishers."

Reiman likes to use setbacks as learning experiences. A restaurant project he tried struck out, but when he bought and revitalized much of downtown Greendale, Wis., near company headquarters, that was a home run.

"He is so much fun to be around because he's so enthusiastic about life in general," said Dan Saftig, president of the Iowa State University Foundation, to which Reiman provides philanthropic support — and pointers. "He's always thinking, always coming up with a new angle."

Reiman says he's not the retiring kind, and he's getting ready for another launch. "I'm still sanding off the corners," he said.

BY DONNA HOWELL