We know that the print industry is suffering these days. Advertisers are pulling out of print and even with a devoted reader base, long-standing magazines like Blueprint, Domino, House & Garden and Vogue Living have folded.
In the December edition of Vanity Fair, former Domino magazine exec Patrick Cline and Michelle Adams combined their vision for a web based magazine that integrated ads into editorial content for Lonny Magazine, a word made from the fusion of London and New York. Here, the web magazine mimics the reader experience of hard print, even the ability to flip pages. How many times have you jumped pages in a magazine to get to the editorial content? Readers can mouse over articles or pictures of interest and can connect with a click to the retailer. See an idea you’d like to try in the editorial? Click on it to find out where you can get it.
Financing a new magazine was no easy feat given the status of the many big names that have folded. Lonny Magazine raised their money through the most traditional methods: their team worked for free, borrowed money from family, kept their day jobs and because they had no money for marketing, relied on the internet buzz generated by bloggers, facebook and twitter to spread the word of their launch. Their first edition cost $11,000 to produce, 10K of photography, processing, and equipment was donated by friends and companies; 1K for various out of pocket expenses; even the car was borrowed from Adam’s parents. Now that’s what I call bootstrapping.
No calls or pleas for hundreds of thousands of dollars, they got their noses to the grind stone and just ‘did it’, making their product, proving that it was feasible and profitable, believe in their product, and paid their dues. Now they’re in Vanity Fair and in a much better position to receive financing than if they did nothing at all but brainstorm on a piece of paper.
Lonny’s next issue comes out in December, check them out at www.lonnymag.com.
