Andrew Mangion is the Executive Chairman at EC, an English language teaching company that has grown from one school to teach around 40,000 students per year. He talks about his vision for the family-owned company that is now a global operation, his work with ALTO and the evolving study travel sector.
The PIE: How did you start in the study travel industry?
AM: My first touch point with the industry goes all the way back to 1986, when I worked as a group leader in a language school in Malta. I had actually got involved in the industry from a shareholding point of view in 97, when I bought into what is now EC. At the time it was partly owned by my family and there were some outside shareholders, so I came in and bought out the outside shareholders for myself and family.
The PIE: You bought the whole thing? Or do you still have outside shareholders?
AM: I was able to buy the entire shareholding for myself and family, so today I own a major share in the company and my family own the balance.
“It’s been a real adventure. I don’t say this in the past tense, I feel we’re still midway through our journey”
The PIE: Do your family still get involved in the decision making then?
AM: Actually my family today are not involved in the executive decision making at all. My family were never, in the history of the company, involved in the day to day running of the company, with the exception of a brief period in 96 when my mother had got involved.
The PIE: So tell us a bit about EC’s history then, because you’re a fairly sizeable operation now.
AM: It’s been a real adventure. I don’t say this in the past tense, I feel we’re still midway through our journey. I’d say the first 5 years were a real focus on trying to grow the company from a small, school with 12 classrooms in Malta to being a much larger, more stable player in Malta. So that defined the first 5 years between 1997 and 2001, 2002.
I would say then the next 11 years has been about a number of different things. One has been about taking the company international, and that involves acquisitions. So I’ve driven all of our acquisitions over the last 11 years. The other thing has been also about organic growth because certainly in the last 3 or 4 years we’ve done a significant number of start-ups, primarily in the US but also in the UK.
But it’s been also about, for example, professional development of our staff, bringing on board some great people and ensuring that they’re very engaged, and ensuring that we’re developing our products.
The PIE: Can you give an example of how you’ve developed your product?
AM: As well as our core products, like our general English and intensive English courses, we’ve developed into exam programmes which we’ve been doing a lot more of. And I’d say a huge amount of development has gone into academic year programmes, which today is a mainstay in the company.
“There really is a large amount of handholding by our team”
Academic year is a very important programme where we give a huge amount of value to students in terms of add-ons that we give in the afternoons, free courses, tutorials. There really is a large amount of handholding by our team.
The PIE: Do you extend that service to counselling about university courses?
AM: Absolutely. Currently we have some 40 university partners where we do counsel students, primarily in the US and Canada on onward pathways into universities.
Ultimately, this really ties into our core purpose, because we believe that our purpose is more than teaching English. We go a step beyond that; we believe that our purpose, and it’s actually defined, is helping students succeed in the global community. We’re arming students with what they need to then go on to either great jobs or onto universities where they can better their careers and better their prospects.
The PIE: How do you see the industry continuing to change?
AM: This is still, I believe, a very fragmented industry, which is what makes it a lovely industry to be in, because it brings so many colourful people, both from the agents background, the services background, and obviously the ancillary services around that. I do see more consolidation happening, I think consolidation is here to stay for the next few years. I think we may see in the next few years an element of consolidation among agents, which we haven’t really seen so far. But there is more to happen
The PIE: What about recruitment? How do you recruit your students?
AM: EC made a very conscious decision from the very early days when I first got involved in the company that we wanted to work through agent channels. We felt that what we could achieve working through agent channels, who were specialists in their countries and were adding value to the students at the coutnry, the region or the city level, we would not be able to achieve on our own. You can’t be a star agency in 140 countries, but you can be a star b2b provider in x number of countries if you work with agents from these countries.
The PIE: Do you think the agent channels themselves will change?
AM: We’re not naive about things; I believe that agents will only manage to retain their position as long as they add value to the client. What I see are the agents adding value in terms of giving them choice, in terms of counselling them on what is best for them, in terms of helping to consolidate junior groups and giving them the sort of supervision that they require from door to door. In terms of helping them with visas and counselling them on possible work in certain cases, so as long as agents continue to give value to the clients, there is a solid place for agents.
“I think consolidation is here to stay for the next few years”
The PIE: How have you encountered challenges in markets like China?
AM: We, I would have to say today, and I say this with an element of frustration, that China remains the big frontier for EC. EC has still not made even a dent in China. I don’t think it will remain like that forever. We will eventually make more than a dent, I think we will make a mark in China, but we’re not there yet. That will change.
The PIE: You’re also quite heavily involved with ALTO and you seem to be interested in taking insight from other industries and applying it to this industry. What key things would you like to see change in terms of professionalism in the study travel industry?
AM: Let me start by saying what I’d like to see not change, because I think that’s just as important. There are lots of industries out there that can be quite aggressive industries. The thing that I love about this industry, which has really allowed me to make it my home, is the fact that it’s so collegiate. That competitors, although they compete and there can be heated competition, they really collaborate well together, they work well together and they forge friendships.
AM: Ultimately ALTO is a member organisation, it’s member-led, and it needs to be an organisation that gives back and also takes. So it’s about sharing, it’s about getting members together from the entire industry, not just schools huddling up and saying ‘what are the agents talking about?’ or agents huddling up and saying ‘what are the schools talking about?’ but actually bringing everybody together, including associations and suppliers to our industry and having meaningful discussions.
The PIE: It is a unique forum..
AM: It’s about bringing the leaders together, knocking our heads together and saying ‘what are the critical issues going to be 5, 10 years down the line? Because the reality is, our front-end managers are really looking at the next 90 days. They’re not looking at the next 9 years. Whereas it has to be the leaders of organisations looking at the medium or long term.
The PIE: You were the CEO of EC and then became Executive Chairman. Is that so you could spend more time on strategy?
AM: That’s a good question. It’s a question that many people ask me. I first thought about handing over the CEO role 6 years ago. At the time I was just 37. It’s pretty young to think ‘I should move on’. And the reason is this: I’m a firm believer that leadership is not a sprint, or even a marathon. I believe that leadership is a relay: leaders who are lined up to hand the baton to the next person, who will then run the next distance. Leadership is very intense emotionally and physically.
“I’m a firm believer that leadership is not a sprint, or even a marathon. I believe that leadership is a relay”
I don’t think leadership is something one can hang on to for decades and decades. As long as one has the energy, the vision and the engagement to handle that, then that’s great. And so I believe in succession, and that’s why I wanted to pass onto a new CEO, who I believed was the right person to handle the next part of EC’s journey.
It has freed up my time to focus on strategy, focus on developing an non-executive board of directors, which I now have today, focussing on more business development M&A work, mergers and acquisitions, which since I’ve been Executive Chairman we’ve seen a lot of at EC. You can’t be at the coalface and then at the same time pulling yourself up to 30,000 feet and looking at the big picture.
The PIE: Looking at the big picture, where do you see EC developing from here on in?
AM: I see EC continuing to do what it does and doing it better, expanding in the markets it’s already in. Eventually yes, moving into new geographies.
“When you get into the in-country model you’re not looking at student weeks any more, you’re looking at student hours”
I wouldn’t exclude in-country. It’s a bit of a different model. It’s one thing when you’ve got students committing 20 hours a week and 6 weeks a year to really dedicating themselves to learning English. When you get into the in-country model you’re not looking at student weeks any more, you’re looking at student hours. And that’s where you get less engagement, students may commit to 2, 4 hours a week to you. It can be a struggle to bring those students back after they’ve finished a 12-week programme, for example. I think an in-country model is more of a sales and marketing engine, less of an academic engine, possibly.
The PIE: What did you study? Did you go to university?
AM: I went to university in the US. When you’re 17 living on a little island like Malta all you can think about is getting out. So I studied in a small liberal arts college in Iowa. I double majored: I studied international business management and I studied French. So I know what it’s like to learn a language, I speak 4 languages, and I know what it’s like when you’re struggling to learn a language.
“I know what it’s like when you’re struggling to learn a language”
I spent 7 years, both at school and university learning French, thinking that I could speak French. I actually realised that I didn’t know French when I went to live in Paris and after a year I could speak French fluently. So it really convinced me that full immersion actually works.
The PIE: Has that experience informed your student care and welfare?
AM: EC first and foremost sees itself as a customer service organisation, before even an academic organisation, and I say that because if we are able to care for our clients and make them feel like they are in a nurturing environment, then it’s so much easier for them to learn.
