Business Insider preps British edition

Ricardo Bilton of Digiday writes about the upcoming British edition of Business Insider.

Bilton writes, “For its U.K. endeavor, however, Business Insider is taking a more direct approach, hiring a team of about 12, including sales people, reporters, and a general manager to build out its upcoming office in London. The site is expected to launch in the late summer or in the fall.

“‘It obviously makes sense to start where people are already reading us in English,’ said Julie Hansen, Business Insider’s president. As it stands now, Business Insider already claims 5 percent of its traffic from the U.K.

“The U.K.’s competitive landscape could pose a challenge for Business Insider, however. London is already home to well-entrenched, albeit comparatively dusty financial publications like the Financial Times, The Economist and the European arm of The Wall Street Journal. That’s daunting, but BI has elbowed itself ahead of similar competition in the U.S. The site now boasts its audience is bigger than The Wall Street Journal’s. The approach in the U.K. is pretty much the same: run a lean, lower-cost operation that’s nimble and anything but stodgy.”

Read more here.