Obituary: RS Consulting Co-founder Bryan Atkin

Bryan Atkin, co-founder of UK research group RS Consulting, has died after a battle with leukaemia. He was 72.

Atkin was born in February 1944, and after graduating from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1965, he joined IMR Ltd as a graduate trainee. He spent nineteen years with the company, rising to the position of Director and specialising in all aspects of industrial, commercial, and institutional research, from quantitative database to strategy development.

In 1984 Atkin, Hamid Anvari and John Leston set up RS Consulting as a predominantly business-to-business market research agency. Atkin himself specialised in research-based consultancy to the IT, telecoms, and business systems industries, with a focus on product development, channel management, pricing strategy, market segmentation and customer satisfaction measurement.

Twenty one years later the business was sold to Cello Group in a deal worth £4.75m. Cello then merged its financial specialist Consensus Research, consumer researcher Leapfrog, and public sector agency mruk with RS Consulting to form The RS Group, with offices in London and Glasgow. Following the acquisition, Atkin and Leston worked as Partners at Cello, with Atkin serving as RS Consulting's Chairman of the Board until he retired in 2014. The group is now known as Breaking Blue Research.

Throughout his life, Atkin continued to be available to give research advice to whoever needed it. He lived out his retirement in a beautiful location by the canal, and fulfilled his passion for theatre and travel, as well as spending time with his family.

Breaking Blue Research Director Phil Stubington, who previously served as RS Consulting's joint MD, comments: 'Throughout his entire career Bryan was always fascinated by finding out what people really felt and helping clients use that information. His indelible enthusiasm for market research made a huge impression on everyone he met, and the generation of researchers he taught and inspired stands on his shoulders'.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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