We stock about a gazillion different magazine titles as well as stationery across our 5 stores in Australia, New Zealand and online.

Archive for August, 2009

T-shirt exhibition being held at mag nation

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

As part of the Melbourne Spring Fashion Week, mag nation is holding a T-shirt exhibition on The Third Floor at our Elizabeth St store. This is an official part of the program people. It ain’t just us freeloading on an established event to push our own agenda. Well, perhaps there is a little of that too, but hey – most of you don’t even realize that we sell T-shirts and its about time you did.

Some of the best designer T-shirt brands in the land will be hanging their finest all over our walls, and it will be a sight to be seen. When we say “their finest”, we are referring in many cases to “one-offs” or next season’s never-seen-before designs.

And lending his weighty credibility to the entire event is Eddie Zammit, founder of T-world Journal and all round T-shirt nut (he owns over 1,400 T-shirts – we kid you not). Eddie will be speaking about T-shirt culture this coming Tuesday (1st Sep) between 6:30 and 7:00 pm on The Third Floor. If you would like to come along, you need to RSVP at info@magnation.com. Given the interest this talk has already received, I am not sure how we are going to fit you all in, but not to worry – we’ll find a way.

Eddie Zammit speaking at mag nation

If you can’t make it Tue night, you should at the very least get down during the week (or go up given you have to climb 2 flights of stairs) to check out the Ts. Just some of the brands represented include:

10DEEP
ALIFE
BKTM
Boski
Burn
Graniph
MKTW
Nique
Syke
Triumvir
Worn Free

This is going to be the best T-shirt exhibition in the history of the world* We seriously suggest you don’t miss out (the T-shirts will be for sale but we have 1 item of each design only so you need to be quick) – you will be kicking yourselves otherwise. Sydney – this is the sort of random stuff you can expect from us when we arrive there shortly. Yes, we are the galactic  experts in magazines, but we do other gunk too.

*Disclosure – we are blantantly exaggerating, but “damn fine” didn’t sound as impressive as “best in the world”. As long as we disclose it, this is alright isn’t it?

Posted in Entrepreneurial, T-shirts | 1 Comment »

Our Love Affair with Love Magazine – Issue 2 Now Out

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

Occasionally something really exciting and interesting comes along that we just have to write about. Love magazine is definitely one of these those rare gems: merging high-end fashion (with the requisite ad spreads for Miu Miu, Marc Jacobs, Versace and the like…) and art with the vitality of vintage late-80s The Face and Interview in its prime. Launched by publishing giant Conde Naste and led by the former editor of Pop magazine and, interestingly, employing Pixie Geldof as a staff writer, they’re definitely onto something good here.

love_mag_cover1

love_mag_cover2

Like Purple Fashion, this is a twice yearly affair – the first issue, featuring a semi-naked Beth Ditto on the cover flew off our shelves, and I’d be surprised if this one stuck around for very long. Features in this issue include an interview with Rory Caulkin (Macaulay’s youngest brother) photographed by Terry Richardson, fashion photos by Bruce Weber, and Marc Jacobs talking to the sixteen year old daughter of Carrie Fisher.

love_mag_spread1

love_mag_spread2

Throw into the mix interviews with both thirteen year old fashion blogging sensation Tavi and 21 year old porn star turned film actress Sasha Grey, and you get a pretty good idea of the all-round quality and range of the content here.  Another two cover affair, we’ve got both in stock, one featuring musician Coco Sumner (who just happens to be Sting’s daughter) and the other featuring… “Alex Hartley, 18, Guitar Teacher and Bass Player from Birmingham”. Buy it online or in-store.

Posted in Individual Mag Titles | No Comments »

New Issue of Frankie

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

The new September/October issue of Frankie is now on sale so we can finally blog about it and show you some of the spreads.

frankie-cover1

One of the most consistently popular magazines on our shelves, (we literally unpacked box after box after box of these last week), this new issue includes a feature on Gallic style ingénue Charlotte Gainsbourg, an interview with actress Zooey Deschanel talking about her role in the new indie romance flick 500 Days of Summer, as well as the usual line-up of fashion spreads, book and music reviews, gorgeous photos and layouts and a lengthy section of reviews on….um, meat substitutes. If you haven’t heard of Soylami and Tofurkey, then brace yourselves.

frankie-image 1
frankie-image 2

We hear a rumour of a new Frankie limited edition product that is to be launched soon. Actually, it is much more than just a rumour – we know all about it, but saying this doesn’t make it sound so mysterious and hush hush. We can’t wait to get our hands on it, devour it as we do all things Frankie, and then, maybe if you are lucky, share it with you too. Watch this space.

Posted in Individual Mag Titles | No Comments »

Call out for interns – we want to love you

Friday, August 21st, 2009

We need help. We have such grand plans and amazing ideas that we are ready to implement but we simply don’t have the people power to get some of it done. We could do some of it ourselves, but we aren’t designers, photographers or all-round super creatives.

Stop complaining and go hire some more folk.

I love it when we have hecklers in our blog posts. Problem is you idiot heckler that we don’t have the dosh to simply go out hiring new people. Generally, people like to eat and they normally ask for lots of money in return for their services so they can eat. Or buy other necessities such as magazines.

What about students and people breaking into their professions – they don’t need to eat!

Great idea Mr Heckler. Completely forgot about students and emerging creatives and their ability to feed themselves on hope, optimism and a sense of adventure.

Ok people that fall into this category. We want you. Three Internships are now ready for the taking. We will pay you in love and you will become better people. Ok, not quite true. We will pay you something token that looks and smells like money but actually can be used as legal tender for magazines at your favourite magazine store. You can also add the work to your already incredibly impressive portfolios; we’ll recognize your herculean efforts on our blog, and do other things that that might be able to catapult you onto the world stage. Or maybe the creative equivalent of the local pub scene.

We are looking for a Designy type, a Photographer, and a Video Admin Assistant. The wonderful folk at iSpyStyle have all the details of what is involved and you can check them out here. You have to be Melbourne based as the stuff you will be photographing and videoing is based here.

We hope this is the beginning of a long and passionate relationship with you. Or maybe just passionate. Or maybe even short and dull as long as we all get off. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Posted in Entrepreneurial, The Inside Story | 9 Comments »

Another Magazine – Multiple Covers

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Lots of the really cool magazines, especially those with lower frequencies such as 2 per year, are now regularly producing multiple covers. Monster Children is known for it, but Lula, Vanity Fair, and a bunch of mainly European titles have started doing this with great success.

Here are the FOUR new covers for the Aut/Win Fall 09 issue of  Another Magazine, a really gorgeous fashion and lifestyle publication. Each of the four covers features non-stereotypical photos of very high profile celebs: Kate Moss, Natalie Portman, Vanessa Paradis, and Katie Holmes. We think that these covers are sensational.

Another Magazine - Kate Moss

Another Magazine - Natalie Portman

Another Magazine - Vanessa Paradis

Another Magazine - Katie Holmes

Undoubtedly, we will get customers coming in asking us for one particular cover or the other. Unfortunately, we do not know what covers or combinations of covers we are going to receive until we actually receive them. People inevitably get disappointed when they can’t get their favourite one. Lucky for us that all four of these covers are strong. We don’t have it in yet but it should come in the next month and we will announce it’s arrival. Alternatively, you can always pre-order online. We forecast that this issue will sell incredibly well.

Posted in Individual Mag Titles, Magazine Industry | 2 Comments »

Why we haven’t blogged for a week

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Up until now, we have been pretty good at regularly posting new blog entries on the mag nation blog. This is our first entry in a week, and I run the risk of ignoring your good advice of keeping it constant. There is a good reason why we have been silent, and it raises a dilemma that we will continue to struggle with.

As a young entrepreneurial company, we are in the midst of a capital raise that will help us with our expansion ambitions. I have been up to my ears in legals and other really boring shit. Here is the problem. I just haven’t had the head space to blog.

Most of the sensational blogs are run by people for whom it is a key part of their job description. It is sort of what they do. I am trying to run a business with 40 staff, build a brand, deal with operational issues, create new, never before seen functionality for our website, do the financials, and deal with that one customer who bought a subscription from a local newsagent and remains convinced that mag nation should refund him his money!

I at times find it difficult to deal with all of this, especially when currently dealing with a bunch of lawyers day and night, and blog at the same time.

With this in mind, we considered passing on the blogging role to someone else in the Company. Lots of people can blog but very few can do the other stuff, especially the capital raising. But then, we realized that this would put at risk the unique voice that we are trying to put forward. This blog is meant to be about the mag nation brand from the perspective of one of the two people who founded it and who is responsible for its upbringing.

So, how do we continue to post as close to daily as possible, not outsource it to a non-genuine voice, but do all the other stuff that only the Founders can do to help us build the brand, expand it to new geographies, and survive in these tough times?

While it will ebb and flow, we still hope to be able to blog a few times a week, with the worst case scenario being the occasional once a week.  If we have to make a compromise, we will make it with regards to regularity and volume of posts, but not on authenticity.

Posted in Entrepreneurial, Strategy, The Inside Story | 1 Comment »

Spook Magazine

Friday, August 7th, 2009

We don’t like to do detailed critiques or reviews of a magazine. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder and while we know a lot about the magazine industry, we are never going to be experts on fashion, gaming, design, architecture, knitting, water sports, or any of the other topics covered in our stores. How can we be? What we do know is whether a magazine is going to sell in our stores or not.

We get to see new mags all the time, and one that just hit out radar screen is Spook.

spook

We think this baby will sell. That is not to say that it is better or worse than any other mag out there, but it has a good feel to it. The cover is clean and it stands out on the shelf. For a first issue, there is plenty of content, and the team behind it tells me they have already accumulated enough content for close to another two issues. The paper stock is silky, and when I got my copy hot from the printers (literally) the magazine smelled great. No kidding. I sniffed it.

How do we know that Spook will do well? We don’t… but we just have a feel. Call it experience or a sixth sense, but we tend to get it right on most occasions. We can also get it wrong – for example, I can honestly say that we never thought we would sell as many copies of A Cloth Covered Button as we actually did – but in the main, we are pretty spot on.

Spook is a fashion and sub-culture lifestyle type mag. The creators of Spook described it to me as similar in feel to Frankie but with balls so it is a little more relevant to guys as well. They also mentioned it feeling a little more raw in terms of content.

Good luck to Spook and the team behind it. We will be doing what we can to help you succeed. We love the fact that smart, professional creatives remain committed to print. We hope that we are right and that you sell well.

Posted in Individual Mag Titles | 10 Comments »

Even when things go wrong, there is no need to be a spanker

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

This is not strictly magazine related, but it is happening as I type. Yesterday, I flew out from Melbourne to Auckland to visit our 3 NZ stores (I am based in Melb, the other mag nation founder in Auck). I timed this trip around a speech I was meant to be giving at a Design School in Christchurch. Today (Tuesday) my co-founder and I were supposed to be flying out to Christchurch for the day with lots of mags in tow.

Now, I don’t really want to slag off the airline in question so I will disguise their identity. Lets just say that they have the words Star and Jet in their name. This not-to-named airline, boarded us, had a problem, had us sit on the tarmac for an hour and then brought us back to the terminal.

Nothing unusual in this. Unfortunately, this type of thing happens all the time. But, it was obvious that there was no way I would be arriving in Christchurch in time to do the speech. They were quoting another 2 hours before the problem would be fixed.

So, we asked for our bags to be offloaded. No point going to Christchurch for the day if not to do the speech. We were told by the ground staff that this was not possible and that they would not be offloading any bags. We were being forced to fly to Christchurch (1 hour 20 mins), pick up our bags and fly straight back on our return flight that would have left shortly after we landed there. It also meant we wouldn’t have received our refund. Sounds ludicrous? Well, it is.

I didn’t lose my cool, even though I was wondering where on earth were these people’s brains? I realised that they were just following rules and orders. I had every right to be frustrated. It was not just a return flight to Christchurch but also a return flight from Melbourne to Auckland that had been wasted. Everyone was affected by the delay, but me especially so.

I finally managed to speak to the Captain, and it was agreed we could offload our bags (I was otherwise planning simply not to board and then they would have been forced to offload them). When waiting for our bags, another lady recently arrived from Queenstown started screaming at a ground staff member because her bags were 10 mins late coming off the plane.

The mystery airline in question is a low cost carrier (another clue). We all know that low cost carriers suck, but we still choose to fly with them because they are cheap. Great when things go well, but terrible when things go amiss. Low cost means little in terms of service compared to the normal carriers.

Accept it lady. No point screaming at a hapless ground staff member. It amazes me how people think they will feel better by offloading their frustrations on people who can’t do anything about it.

Update: the same staff member now tells me that this inept airline is also having problems with their equipment and that the loader used to offload our bags is also broken. As the Captain just said across a loud speaker, he couldn’t even be making this stuff up.  What a comedy of errors.

Where was I… Oh yes, I am massively frustrated. But I am smiling. Jumping and screaming will achieve nothing other than making me more mad. Even when things go wrong, there is no point being a spanker.

Posted in The Inside Story | 3 Comments »

Take Nothing for Granted… Trust No One

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

One of the things we have learned since we started mag nation is that we should take nothing for granted. We get customers who stand in our Elizabeth St store and having watched others go up and down the stairs with mags in hand, ask us whether we have an upstairs. We have had a person in our Greville St store wait to be served while our staff member makes a coffee for the customer in front of them, only to then tell our staff member “you guys should serve coffee – it would really compliment your business”. We get this sort of stuff all the time. We no longer take anything for granted. We try to be prepared for anything. We have even got used to the multitude of calls in Auckland asking us about mag wheels.

This is why last week we were so surprised to be taken by surprise.

When we add new local mag titles onto our subscription website, we first require their publisher to sign an agreement with us. This agreement has an appendix that asks for all the magazine details, including basic stuff like “who do we advise customers to call when they have a delivery enquiry for your magazines?” We load this info onto our system, and when you subscribe to a local mainstream Aus/NZ mag, you get given this number on the success screen, as well as by email. You also see this number if you log into your mag nation account.

Imagine our shock when we found out that some of the biggest publishers in Australia had given us the wrong number. We had been directing customers through to the appropriate mailing house, but to their accounts and finance department who knew nothing about subscriptions instead of their delivery operations team. That is why these calls were bouncing back to us. The problem has been rectified by the 30 second exercise of inputting the correct phone number into our system. Frustrating yes, but we have learned a valuable lesson.

We thought we could trust our publisher partners to at least give us the right phone number for their delivery folk. They didn’t. We couldn’t. What we have learned is that in order for you to be able to trust us, we can trust no one.

Posted in Magazine Industry, The Inside Story | 2 Comments »