Meet Ravi. He is one of the two founders of mag nation. Much less in the public eye than I am (Sahil), he is every bit a driving force of mag nation as is the guy writing this blog. He also happens to be one of the smartest blokes around.

Ravi is a medical doctor. Moreover, he is a Pathologist. So, when he’s not busy building a retail empire, he diagnoses rare diseases in his spare time, which is a useful skill to have in this industry. Okay, not really.

When he migrated to New Zealand from India, the New Zealand government wouldn’t recognise his qualifications. (Which is pretty crazy stuff when you consider that could have taught many of the local doctors a thing or two about Pathology, having dealt with all sorts of weird diseases during his time on the sub-continent. But, I digress…)

Because he wanted a different life for his family, Ravi left India and gave up years of study and a thriving private practise in the process. Unable to practise medicine in New Zealand and with no non-medical business experience behind him, he bought a small convenience store called Mega Mags in Queen St in Auckland. From there, the mag nation concept was born.

This bloke is a rocket scientist. Genius mind. He is also my uncle. And he is incredibly precious to me. My second child’s middle name is in honour of the guy.

When we began to plan what would later become mag nation, he did everything he could to talk me out of it. He told me that I had a real future in the corporate world, family responsibilities, and that I shouldn’t risk everything on a dream. Only when I proved my stubbornness did he relent and welcome me to his world of being broke.

At 55 years old, Ravi is no spring chicken. In fact, a publisher we often deal with referred to him recently as ‘the Yoda of Magazines’. He is known globally (he has spoken twice at Colophon) and there are few people with more knowledge of magazine retail supply than he has. Yet, he is also remarkably young in his outlook.

For a brand that takes such a different and at times irreverent approach, people are often surprised to find out that neither of the founders are in their 20s.

Virtually all the mags that you see in mag nation are there because Ravi decided that they should be and could be. He is the sort of bloke who can memorise spreadsheets worth of data and regurgitate pricing and margins at a moments notice. He is also the guy who when discussing creating subscription terminals in-store and how to avoid theft of equipment, suggested that we glue the mouse to the table. It took him 30 seconds to realize why the rest of us where wetting our pants. We all have our slips.

More than all else, he is a good bloke. If you are going to bet your entire future on a business, might as well be with someone you trust. There is no blame, recrimination or singular credit amongst the two of us. Though all of this is totally irrelevant to the average customer walking into our stores, I genuinely hope you feel something intangible but special when walking into a mag nation store.

If you do, then you are feeling the presence of the Yoda of Magazines.

(‘Ravi Yoda’ illustration by the inimitable Tyson Savanah from our Elizabeth Street store.)

I need your help. As you would expect from the mag nation chief magazineologist, I keep an eye out on what other magazine subscription sites are doing. Christmas is the key time for mag subscriptions, and every subscription provider dials up the rhetoric on offers and freebies.

We too are offering free stuff if you subscribe to magazines through our website. We do it because we think customers like it.

However, where we are different is in terms of size and independence. We are not affiliated with any publisher. Nor are we a massive corporate who can afford TV advertising. This is where I need to ask your opinion…

The other guys are offering a chance to win a car, a fantastic exotic holiday, a trip to the moon etc… But only one or two people win this. Most of the mag nation staff don’t even own a car, so we definitely ain’t giving one away. Therefore, we are offering what we can… 1 in every 100 subscriptions purchased from us is for free. This means that lots of people will win something small, as opposed to 1 person winning something big. We have already contacted a bunch of people and delighted them by telling them that their subscription purchase has been fully refunded to their credit card.

Does this work better for you? Or do you prefer the tattslotto type odds and pay off? Or maybe you don’t give a shit and the freebies are just a distraction? What do you think we should be doing from a marketing perspective to entice you to consider us over and above the others? Please keep in mind that we have very limited budgets!

Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. While it is too late for us to change anything this year, perhaps we need to start saving up for next year to offer you a fantastic camping trip in my mum’s back yard…

Tomorrow morning I am speaking at the Melbourne Spring Fashion Week Breakfast Series. I have no idea if tickets are still on sale or not, but you can check out the program and enquire here if you are interested.

I was somewhat surprised by the invite. Despite the persona underlying mag nation, I am probably one of the least qualified blokes to speak at a fashion event that you could ever imagine. My super stylish Spanish wife can’t stop laughing at the thought.

Luckily, I have been spared from embarrassment thanks to the topic up for discussion. Here is what is says on the MSFW website:

An exceptional line up of speakers will share their experience and knowledge on what it takes to create and maintain customer relationships throughout the retail lifecycle – from the temptation and seduction of courting new shoppers, through love and marriage, and how to ward off separation.

Learn more about the most evolved, savvy, feature-rich retail brands and online entrepreneurs and how they connect to their consumers’ desires at every touch point to seize their brand’s potential and build relationships that last.

We feel honoured to be thought of in this light. However, they have definitely put us in the wrong category. There are four breakfasts; the first on Temptation and Seduction was today, while tomorrow is Love. We have some really nice relationships with our customers and I would be happy to admit that with some of these people, there is genuine love which has gone beyond the courting stage. However, the vast majority of folks have never even heard of us. Ask outside the fashion and urban savvy crowd, and people will think that mag nation sells mag wheels (we still get calls about this).

We think it is a little premature to place us in the Love category (hopefully one day we will justify this tag). That said, I will do my best to talk about how we try to engage our customers. The problem with this is how do you talk for 15 mins on the following points:

•    We talk to you

•    We listen to you

•    We respond to you

•    We enjoy ourselves and let you be a part of it

•    We are honest and open

The first 3 points are customer service 101. There is absolutely nothing new in any of that. Perhaps the greatest impact has been the last point. We constantly get told that we are really open and that people like this as it gives them insight into the personality of who mag nation is. We received massive amounts of feedback both online and offline from our first blog post, and perhaps this is the sort of thing we do a little differently from other brands.

In any case, I better now work out what I am going to say tomorrow. I think it will be a pretty discerning crowd, and 5 bullet points ain’t going to cut it. If anyone has any suggestions about what works (or doesn’t) in terms of our engaging with customers, please let us know. A very dangerous thing to ask in light of this particular post, as it will smell really bad if we get zero comments, but perhaps this is all part and parcel of us putting ourselves out there and taking risks.

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.

We are currently in the process of updating our website. The first of the changes in what we have dubbed “Stage 2C” went live last week.

The changes are not massive, but they all feed incrementally into making the site better for users. The most basic change that we made was an obvious one. We simply made the images on our website bigger. Both the listing pages and the main product pages now have larger images than before (about double the size).

Magazine Images in List

BBC Top Gear Magazine Subscription - Larger Image

Bit of a no brainer when you come to think of it. Magazines sell more on impulse than on anything else, and for the masses (this discounts the minority who come onto our site knowing exactly what they are looking for), the front cover of the magazine is what entices them to either click through to the product landing page or go elsewhere.

Most thumbnails of magazines are too small to allow any real engagement with the product. So, we have made them larger. The sacrifice is that fewer magazines fit within a single screen, but we think the trade off is an easy one to make. Scrolling down is not the end of the world, but having to strain to see our content is pretty bad.

The other change is the roll over state. When you now roll over a thumbnail, an enlarged floating image pops up. Again, the idea is that we make things more visual. For a company that is so dependent on visual stimuli, our website was until recently quite data heavy. There is still a massive amount of content, but hopefully now, it is easier to digest.

Sports Illustrated magazine subscription - floating image

Lots more changes are on their way. Our website is still a work in progress for us. We have less than 1% of the online mag market and we need to ramp this up. We therefore have to continue to experiment, adapt and iterate. Stay tuned for product videos, more rewarding review functionality, multiple images per product, and lots more.