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It’s design conference season, with Semi Permanent Sydney kicking things off at the Sydney Convention and Expo Centre this week. Speaker-wise, it’s a veritable embarrassment of riches with a whole host of some of the most interesting magazine publishers and editors and designers around presenting at this year’s event.

Among these is our good friend Eddie Zammit from T-World, Tin & Ed (from the Melbourne based design studio of the same name), San Francisco’s  Fecal Face (an incredible art based community website from San Francisco), the omnisciently wonderful Frankie, the artist and photographer Jill Greenberg and many more.

If you’re going to make it down (and it’s not too late to buy tickets), look out for our stand where we’ll selling a huge range of design mags and books.

Our friends at the Bird in the Hand Zine Shop are holding a zine making workshop this Saturday, upstairs at our Newtown store.  They’ll have, “some pretty nifty interesting paper, magazines, fabrics, scissors and glue as well as staple facilities and writing implements to share.”

RSVP on their Facebook event to take part!

We had a lot of fun on our first Undies Monday. It was beyond funny to see the faces of passers-by as many of you stripped off on the street. However, as any impulsive micro business, there are some things we wish we had done differently.

Our learnings from yesterday are as follows:

• There are way many more exhibitionists out there than we imagined. We were decimated! We happily gave away thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in free products.
• However, it was too easy. Many of you came in large groups and many of you also came either first thing in the morning or just before closing when there were hardly any other people around.
• Most of you were blokes. Most girls chickened out or waited outside while their male partners did the deed (except in Newtown Sydney were there were g-strings as far as the eye could see)!

We did say in our original post that this offer lasts until the 29^th of March (or earlier at our discretion if we determine that Undies Monday will lead to our ruination). Well, it almost did! But, we are going to keep on trying to reward you for acts of underwear bravery.

However, we are going to raise the bar a little and limit the giveaways or we’ll be out of business before the end of March. This promotion has gone completely viral, way beyond what we expected, and there will be no mag nation to offer you ongoing magazine goodness if we have four more Mondays like we did yesterday.

So, for the next Undies Mondays, here are the amended conditions (we may keep tinkering with this as we go) required to get your any one product up to the value of $50 for free.

• You can’t enter a store in your Undies in a group larger than 2 people.
• You have to come into a store on Monday between the hours of 12pm and 5pm
• The offer will only be valid for the first 100 blokes and the first 100 girls to participate across all our stores each Monday while Undies Monday lasts.

Never fear, we would never let you strip off on the street only to come in and find out that we have reached our freebie quota on a given Monday. Therefore, all stores will display a sign on the front door once we have reached our male and female Undies Monday quota. It will be abundantly clear if you won’t be rewarded for stripping off. If in any doubt, come in to the store and ask us first.

We still want to see you all in your jocks, but if 1,000 semi-naked people come in every Monday, we’d be happy…but broke, and you’d have to get reacquainted with your “this is not a library” newsagency.

Below are the previous conditions for your reference… The 3 new rules above simply add on to these ones. Keep having fun, and please challenge other businesses that you love to reward gratuitous displays of underwear.

Can you imagine how cool it would be if we started a retail movement? Surely the world would be a better place with more folks walking around in their Undies….

A couple of rules here:

• This only works on Mondays (that’s why it is called Undies Mondays and NOT Undies Otherdays)
• This offer ends at midnight on the 29th of March 2010 (or earlier at our discretion if we determine that Undies Mondays will lead to our ruination)
• You have to walk in in your undies, no stripping off in store
• You have to take the one item of your choice to the counter – you can’t just walk out with it – and you can’t redeem the difference between $50 and the item of your choice for cash.
• Only one free item per person – you can’t keep coming in to claim on multiple occasions.
• Undies do not include swimwear, gymwear or wearing a t-shirt, other sort of top or pajamas… genuine undies/lingerie only!
• You must be 18 or over to participate
• If you walk in in your birthday suit, we will not serve you. We don’t want anything to do with that!

NEW BONUS OFFER GUYS: The first guy to walk into any of our stores wearing women’s underwear will get two Free Products each to the value of up to $50.

NEW BONUS OFFER GIRLS: The first girl to do the Robot dance for 30 seconds while in her underwear will get two Free Products each to the value of up to $50.

UPDATED: Undies Monday… Too easy? Read this before you strip!

The world is way too serious and lacking of genuine free lunches. In response, we have come up with an antidote which we like to call ‘Undies Monday’.

Here is how it works:

Walk into any mag nation store in just your underwear and we will give you for FREE any magazine, book or stationery item of your choice up to the value of $50.

That’s right. $50 worth of product FOR FREE if you walk into one of our stores in your undies.

A couple of rules here:

• This only works on Mondays (that’s why it is called Undies Mondays and NOT Undies Otherdays)
• This offer ends at midnight on the 29th of March 2010 (or earlier at our discretion if we determine that Undies Mondays will lead to our ruination)
• You have to walk in in your undies, no stripping off in store
• You have to take the one item of your choice to the counter – you can’t just walk out with it – and you can’t redeem the difference between $50 and the item of your choice for cash.
• Only one free item per person – you can’t keep coming in to claim on multiple occassions.
• Undies do not include swimwear, gymwear or wearing a t-shirt, other sort of top or pajamas… genuine undies/lingerie only!
• You must be 18 or over to participate
• If you walk in in your birthday suit, we will not serve you. We don’t want anything to do with that!

As part of our efforts to spread the mag love (um, in this case a bit literally) we’ve got a new competition running on our Facebook page.

Post a photo of you kissing your favourite mag on our Facebook wall and get your friends to either like it or comment on it…. the person with most comments/likes under their photo after 2 weeks gets a free yearly subscription to that magazine (as long as we stock it!)

On the 10th of November, our online sales pretty much inexplicably doubled overnight. After scratching my head for a little while, it dawned on me…

Christmas.

Organised, reliable Christmas shoppers, getting in good and early before the manic 24th of December rush I usually seem to find myself in. And while my hat goes off to those dependable souls out buying presents for their friends and loved-ones over a month out from JC’s special day, I am afraid I am not among them.

If, like me, you’ve left things to the last minute and you’re not feeling so excited about battling other last minute shoppers for the remaining morsels of yuletide goodness left on the shelf… well, we’ve got a solution and I’m pretty sure you know what it is.

Sex toys….. Ok, not really. How about we try for Magazine Subscriptions.

From BBC Top Gear to Better Homes and Gardens, RUSSH to Runner’s World, The Week to The Wiggles we’ve got something for just about everyone. And if you’re a bit stumped for ideas, try and step into recipient’s head using our famous auto-magical ‘Magdentifier‘ which will point you in the direction of the perfect sub, every time. Guaranteed.*

You just need to buy your subscription at magnation.com (you could probably even do this early on Christmas morning, if you wanted to really live life on the edge), then put together a card for the happy recipient(s) (as ours are probably unlikely to now get there on time – damn postal strike) informing them of their new sub and hey, presto! You’ve got Christmas covered.

How easy do we make it for you people?

* Not actually guaranteed.

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As the self styled Robin Hoods of the magazine game, we like to give something back from time to time. And as Christmas approaches with an ever more thunderous Yuletide force, we’re going to do just that.

That’s right: this Festivus we’re offering not one but two special deals to you, our loyal customers! And even you not so loyal customers who are happy to sleep with our Saxon enemies, we’ll happily throw some lovin’ your way too.

The first offer is that one in every 100 subscriptions purchased over the Christmas period will be FREE. 100% reimbursed, money straight back onto your credit card, you win free mags.

How good is that? None of this win a trip to Hawaii crap. You know you will never win that type of competition. One person in about 10,000 wins that. Here, your chances are 1 in a 100.

The second—which is a bit exciting and also a little bit scary as we’re honestly not too sure how this one is going to go and we may very well be shooting ourselves majorly in the foot here—is that the person who buys the most subscriptions between now and the 20th of December will get ALL OF THEM FOR FREE!

Naturally, we’ve had to throw in a few terms and conditions (like limiting the exposure under the 2nd offer on the payout of free subscriptions to 30) to satisfy the ‘legal department’ (which is actually me – we are way too small for a legal department but it sounded quite impressive just to say it) but I think you’ll find they’re pretty reasonable.

Now, there’s only 31 days until Christmas, so get subscribing!