How many of you knew that the cult mag Dumbo Feather, Pass it On was created by a Kiwi?

Well it was, and Kate Bezar, the founder of Dumbo Feather (and one of our really good friends!) has just moved back to the Land of the Long White Cloud.

If you’re not familiar with the mag… well, it’s hard to do it justice in a few short words. But in essence… every quarter it dishes up long-format interviews with five of the most interesting people that you’ve never heard of…

From the American ex-pat in Paris who’s cooked dinner for 60 strangers at his home every Sunday for the past 30 years to a jewellery designer who works with roadkill, to the founder of Wikipedia (yeah, okay, you might have heard of him…)

Kate will be in our Ponsonby store (123 Ponsonby Rd) this coming Saturday (the 8th of May) between 11am – 1pm to sign copies of Dumbo Feather, have a chat, and generally hang out with our Ponsonby customers.

Hope many of you can come along; I can’t think of a better Mother’s day gift than a signed current issue and some back issues of this gorgeous Mook.

Roses are Red

Violets are Blue

Magazines are lovely

And mag nation is too…

Ok – that was utter crap. I am obviously not a poet and I do know it. How about a second attempt?

There was a young store called mag nation

Who was searching for mag retailing inspiration

In the absence of any

Down dropped the proverbial penny

Which led to magazine mecca creation

Still no good huh? Any chance you could help me improve on a poem about mag nation?

How about this for a good deal? Write a poem about mag nation and post it on our Facebook page. It could be a rhyming poem, or it could be a real adult one (no – that doesn’t mean rude content – it just means grown up intellectual poetry), although rhyming is probably easier.

Anyway, submit it on our Facebook page and we will choose the one that we like best to win a prize. And that prize will be FREE COFFEE from either our Elizabeth St, Greville St or King St stores FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR.

See below for the terms and conditions and start poeming!

• We are the kings of this promotion and reserve the right to do anything, change anything or kill it completely if it takes our fancy
• Free coffee for a year means a maximum of one free coffee (regular size) per day (which is valued at precisely $1387)
• You have to submit your poem onto our facebook page prior to midnight on the 30th of April
• Mag Nation will judge the poem they like the best, based on who contacts them offline and offers the best back massage. Ok, maybe not, but this is a completely subjective pursuit and we will be the sole judges.
• No mag nation employee can submit a poem – that means you Simon.
• This particular offer is relevant to our Australian stores. We will think of something else for you New Zealanders, but we don’t serve coffee in Ponsonby or Queen St because Auckland rentals are too damn high to allow us more space.
• The free coffee will start as of the first of May (it might be a tad later in Sydney depending on whether Jared gets our coffee machine in on time) – Sydney customers feel free to email us with encouraging “hurry up Jared” messages that we can forward to our shopfitter.
• Any individual may enter as many poems as they like. Get creative. We like creative.
• By submitting your poem on our facebook page, you give us permission to use it. It becomes ours. All ours. If we want to print it on tea towels or use it as lyrics for our next chart topping single produced by the resurrected trio of Stock, Aitkin and Waterman, then we can.

* all photos used with the express permission of participants!

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Following the success of Undies Monday, we’ve been considering the important question of “what next?” How do we maintain the momentum? How do we next engage our customers in a typically fun and irreverent promotion?

Our big learning from Undies Monday is that the taboo of wearing underwear in public (as long as it is kept within a controlled environment) really appeals to a lot of people. Having spoken to a prominent US based marketing expert yesterday, we realised that the thrill of taking one’s clothes off coupled with a reward directly linked to the risk factor is what created such good will amongst the various participants.

We want to be able to replicate this psychological link, but vary the promotion sufficiently to keep it fresh and interesting.

Therefore, after much thought and deliberation, we would like to introduce you to our newest promotion…

BOOBY TUESDAY!

Now before you write in to complain, we are going to put very strict terms and conditions on this. Please click here to read the Terms & Conditions for Undies Monday. We are going to use this as our base, and in the next 24 hours we’ll submit a new set of Ts & Cs to make sure this doesn’t get out of hand.

So, what is involved? This one is very easy to understand. Come on in to any mag nation exposing your chest region (male or female!) and you will win, wait for it…

Oh shit. What’s the date today?

Damn!

We love design conference season. Kicking back, watching some of the most interesting and inspiring design figures out there talking all about their work and their inspirations and whatever else floats their boat… and leaving the place full of ideas and ready to take on the world. What could be better?

One of our regular favourites, agIdeas kicks off at the Arts Centre in Melbourne on the 26th of April and features a huge range of fascinating speakers from across the design spectrum.

They’ve got some real corkers this year, like Theo Jansen (the guy who builds those creepily lifelike wind powered kinetic sculptures), chef Jacques Reymond, Eamo, We Buy Your Kids (who you might know from their amazing poster designs and album artwork), Dan Formosa (he pretty much designed the original personal computer) and plenty more.

This really is an exceptional event and tickets are selling fast, so make sure to get in quick!

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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!