Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Kraken Opus

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Status
  
Active

Distribution
  
Opus Media Group PLC

Headquarters location
  
United Arab Emirates

Founded
  
2005

Country of origin
  
Guernsey

Publication types
  
Books

Founder
  
Karl Fowler

Key people
  
Karl Fowler, Paul Murphy

Nonfiction topics
  
Sports teams; celebrities; arts; culture

Kraken Opus is a publishing company operating from Guernsey in the Channel Islands; London, United Kingdom; and the United Arab Emirates. The company produces premium, outsized editions on subjects including sports teams and celebrities, and on broader topics including the Muslim hajj. The company describes its publications, which are produced in limited editions retailing for up to £1m, as "works of art".

Contents

Company history

The company is owned by Karl Fowler, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker. He founded Kraken Opus following a period managing his own financial services company, for which he built up a client list including a number of sports stars. The interests of these clients inspired him to consider a high-end publication for sports fans; he invested $5 million of his own money and of capital put up by friends and acquaintances to found Kraken Opus. Its first title was the Manchester United Opus, published in 2006: the book weighed 97 pounds (44 kg) and each edition in its 10,000 run was priced between £3000 and £4500.

In December 2008 the company opened a proprietary shop in Covent Garden. The company entered voluntary administration in June 2009 when a US backer announced that a tranche of $6m in promised funding would not be forthcoming. Days later, following an offer to existing shareholders, Fowler and partner Paul Murphy undertook a management buyout of the company, announcing that a new Arab funder had been found at that the company's headquarters would be moved from London to the United Arab Emirates. At the time the company faced criticism over the delayed publication of the £3000-per-copy Celtic Opus, which was postponed from July 2009, after pre-orders and deposits had been received. The print run was also reduced, but the firm insisted that publication would still go ahead.

Publications

Several of the company's publications have attracted press notice, including the Burj Dubai Opus, a 15-foot (4.6 m) tall edition of which was commissioned to stand in the lobby of the building on its opening. A copy of the Manchester United Opus, auctioned for $1.5m to a Middle Eastern consortium with proceeds given to the Dubai Cares charity, was the most expensive sports book ever sold. Wine Opus had a print run of only one hundred copies, each priced at AU£1.2m each; while one hundred copies of the forthcoming Diego Maradona Opus are due to ship with samples of Maradona's blood and hair. The Prince Opus was sold, in tandem with a branded iPhone model, for US$2,100. Kraken Opus, in partnership with ticket vendor Ticketmaster, also produced the £109 Michael Jackson Opus, the only book licensed by the Jackson estate in the immediate aftermath of his death.

References

Kraken Opus Wikipedia