Bicycle Retailer and Industry News Magazine – A History
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Bicycle Retailer and Industry News Magazine – A History
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Fred Clements returns in this episode to talk with Marc Sani about the history of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News Magazine, the leading trade magazine and website for the global bicycle industry. Marc is the co-founder of BRAIN Magazine and tells us about starting the project in 1992, seeing the popularity rise, launching the website, being bought by the NBDA, becoming the publisher, and moving to Pocket Outdoor Media. He also looks in the crystal ball for what might be in store for the magazine in the future. Website: https://www.bicycleretailer.com/
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Bicycle Retailer and Industry News Magazine – A History
Wed, 11/25 11:41AM • 52:52
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
bicycle, magazine, dealers, years, industry, NBDA, publisher, brain, advertising, people, circulation, editor, bike, news, editorial, publishing, bill, southern california, staff, sponsors
SPEAKERS
Fred Clements, Rachelle Schouten, Big Gear Show, Rod Judd, Marc Sani
Rachelle Schouten 00:03
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Rod Judd 00:27
You are listening to bicycle retail radio brought to you by the National bicycle Dealers Association.
Fred Clements 00:34
Well, hello, and welcome to the NBDA bicycle retail Radio Podcast. I’m Fred Clements and I’ll be hosting today with Mark Sani, the co founder and past editor past publisher. And now I think contributor to the industry’s trade magazine, a bicycle retailer and industry news. Our goal is to take a look back at the founding of brain and then sort of go through the years of its evolution and some of the changes multiple owners, etc. And then ask mark to take out his crystal ball and look into the future a little bit about publishing and the bicycle industry. Hi, Mark.
Marc Sani 01:13
Fred, how are you doing?
Fred Clements 01:15
I’m doing pretty good
Marc Sani 01:15
Good to hear from you.
Fred Clements 01:16
Yeah, yeah, this is this. I’m looking forward to this. I think it’ll be fun. So I remember first meeting you I think it was 1992. When you and a fellow named Bill tandler came and visited the interbike offices where NBDA had an office in the same building. And we met you guys. And I thought you were obviously talented and dedicated people. But there were three other trade magazines in the bicycle industry, all of them struggling. And here come two guys from the ski, I believe industry and outdoor industry saying we’re going to do a trade magazine. And I thought this is a long shot. You guys are crazy. I was wrong, though. So I thought that, you know, the other publications focused a lot on dealer support and how to and things like that, at least and I want to get your take on this. My understanding and my belief was that your focus on news helped bring the industry together. And that was the differentiating thing where it allowed both dealers and the supply side to enjoy and value the same publication, whereas a publication aimed solely at dealer improvement, really didn’t appeal that much to the supply side. Do I have that right? Or am I off base?
Marc Sani 02:31
Well, I think that’s a pretty, pretty accurate summation. I still remember that meeting. Meeting with Steve Reddy and Kathy Newkirk at the time, they were most gracious, they were eager to sell us a spot to interbike. For 1992. We were down in the basement at the Dan Hyde Convention Center. And you weren’t the only one that have had grave doubts about our future as a as a bicycle trade publication.
Fred Clements 02:59
What made you think you could succeed where others were struggling?
Marc Sani 03:03
Well, I don’t know that we ever thought that we could succeed. You know, it was definitely an honor. entrepreneurial startup, Bill and I had no jobs at the time, we had left the ski ski publications where we had been working. I had done a lot of research prior to joining bill on the trade magazines in the bicycle industry at the time. And I have a news background as a newspaper reporter for a number of years, and I worked for the AAP as a wire service reporter, and I just had more of a news driven background. And to be frank, neither one of us knew, knew hardly anything about the bicycle industry. We just figure it out as we went along. And so we did.
Fred Clements 03:45
Yeah. So at first bill was the publisher, and you were the editor is I think that’s how it was, right?
Marc Sani 03:52
Correct. Correct. Bill focused on other things, and I really focused on content.
Fred Clements 03:59
Mm hmm.
Marc Sani 04:00
The other three publications were remarkably similar BDS, or bicycle dealer showcase, and even American bicycle. So they were generally similar in, in their editorial strategy. Bicycle Business Journal, of course, was the wild card out there. But there were three of them. I personally felt from an editorial standpoint, that we could just be a lot more direct and a lot more newsworthy at it. And those three, and I’ve never really been a big fan and, and I’m still not today on the supposition that, you know, theater training and, and that sort of thing is what makes a publication strong. It’s a component, but I’ve never, never really been a fan of driving editorial strictly in that direction.
Fred Clements 04:48
You know, so I think, you know, your news background was really helpful there. The bottom line was, is this interesting, rather than does this, educate somebody and that I think, at least in my mind, was the differentiating philosophy that really helped you guys along there.
Marc Sani 05:03
So I used to tell people that our job was to tell dealers, what suppliers were about to do to them. That was sort of my in house mantra, you know, and that’s why we focus so heavily on covering the supplier side of the business. And I think that’s why dealers found the magazine interesting. We were reporting issues and news that they typically weren’t getting from the other three trade magazines. And of course, we have to remember this was before the internet came on board.
Fred Clements 05:35
Right? Yeah. And I think you had a pretty good relationship. Very good relationship. I’d say with one of your competitors. Bill Quinn, a bicycle business. Yeah. His son Rick’s classic publication, very local hometown feel to Bill’s writing. And I think you even called, he used to put out the pink thing as I recall. And you with His permission, adopted that as one of your promotional things in your early years.
Marc Sani 06:03
Well, I Oh, really a quick anecdote about Bill. It was, again, our first dinner bike, we’re down in the basement at Anaheim, or in the parking garage, one or the other. And this big, tall guy, dress suit, very smooth looking. A guy walks into our booth, and he goes, Who the hell are you guys. And we became fast friends after that. Bill was quite a character. And actually, his little his little book was a little bit more interesting than the other two from my standpoint. He did trade more in gossipy news and such. And of course, this pink sheet was legendary.
Fred Clements 06:47
Yeah, that’s for sure. So I think, as I recall, during the you know, you so you put in an initial funding and launched it, and then I think you had to it was didn’t instantly grow to where you need it, you had to put in some funding, again, is Is that right?
Marc Sani 07:02
Well, I mean, the only funding we put in really was out of our pockets. I mean, I was freelancing, while doing all this other stuff, and using my own personal savings to move it forward along with Bill. And then when we brought on a couple of ad reps, who we had known from the ski industry, or I should say, Bill knew very well from the ski industry, they did defer their commissions, and that sort of thing, which gave us a leg up the first year. And then of course, we brought in Terry Moyes at some point, down the road about a year after we had launched. And Terry is probably the best publisher any editor could ever work for. And he really got us sprayed on a financial track, and he really managed sales well. And it was, we just moved up after, after the first year, we could just see we were gaining traction. And it was pretty easy to see in the growth of the ad pages and, and in the size of the magazine, the number of pages that we were producing.
Fred Clements 08:02
Mm hmm.
Marc Sani 08:03
So I give Terry Terry boys was just a superb publisher. And I give him a lot of credit for our success.
Fred Clements 08:11
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So the magazine was based in Santa Fe in in those earliest years. That’s where y’all lived.
Marc Sani 08:19
Yeah, I was in Santa Fe until about 2001. I believe. I had left in late 1999 to work as the editorial director at bike magazine powder, and snowboarder in Southern California. I think it was in 2001 when it was sold again, and move to Laguna Beach.
Fred Clements 08:46
Mm hmm. Right. And then, yeah, yeah. So I guess I, I sort of look at those as sort of the middle years. I think in those years, you went to an 18 time per year. schedule, you launched the show dailies at interbike. That became a wonderful source of revenue and service to the industry. As you mentioned, the sale to Miller Freeman along with interbike. I mean, Miller Freeman and Darrell Denny they, they negotiated and bought interbike. And then to kind of back that up, but bicycle retailer and industry news at the same time. So
Marc Sani 09:20
yeah, it was an amazing, amazing move on Darrell’s part. But yeah, we had gone 18 times I’m going to say maybe in 1995 or 96. We did it. We did it fairly early in our growth. This predates sort of the rise of the Internet. We were putting out a lot of magazines to a month, six months out of the year. And it was an amazing way to grow our business. And of course, by then we’d really put all the other trade magazines out. Right. And so, and then, of course the dailies and that sort of thing really moved us forward. And of course, Miller Freeman bought us in conjunction with interbike
Fred Clements 10:07
was that when the magazine was moved to Southern California?
Marc Sani 10:11
No, it was moved to Southern California outcry has left nor Freeman was sold to United news and media, a British company. And I’m going to say around 2000 and your 2000. And it was that company that decided to Well, I just glitzy was sold to the United news and media and then it was sold to vNu, a Dutch company. And it was the Dutch organization that moved it to Southern California to the interbike offices and we were in a beach and at that point in time, I was working with surfer and powder and, and bike magazine and snowboarder.
Fred Clements 10:54
I don’t remember exactly the year but unfortunately bill handler passed away and you left and I think Terry Moyes became publisher then
Marc Sani 11:03
I was still there when Bill passed, I believe that was in 1997. And he had a heart attack on a Schwinn treadmill. The rest is history. Yes. At that point, Terry became the full publisher. And actually, Terry had really been working as the publisher prior prior to that, in all practical terms. I think that was 1997. I could go back and check. I’m pretty sure that’s when it was
Fred Clements 11:28
moved to Southern California. You were at bike. I think, as I recall, Terry didn’t want to move to Southern California. So he eased away and you were recruited to come in and be the new publisher?
Marc Sani 11:42
That’s, that’s correct. So I think it was sometime sometime around 2001 or 2000. Yeah. 2001, I think, late 2001. Yes, I, I went over and became publisher brain.
Fred Clements 11:57
So at that point, Michael ganster. Was editor. I think the Megan Tompkins was on your staff as a junior editor at that point, is that right?
Marc Sani 12:05
Yeah, that’s correct. Yeah. All these names come flooding back. Yeah. A lot of good work. But, you know, as I was, like, my prior to going with the NBDA, I was in publishing and one of my jobs in six years I was there. And we had three owners. You’ve had a lot more owners than that, and a lot of things to adjust when any company is absorbed or taken over ownership changes. Then I guess, the later sort of later middle years, you had some very successful years, a bigger staff. And certainly the website established itself bicycleretailer.com. Somewhere in there, the NBDA got involved is in a licensing deal, and took over ownership of brain without owning it. I mean, the bikes company, a parent company still owned it, but the NBDA operated it under license. I think that was maybe 2003. Yeah,
Fred Clements 13:07
and I think up until pocket outdoor took it over just a year and a half or two years ago. The NBDA ran it for about 15 years and oversaw it basically caretaker, because honestly, I was there and and you did all the work. I can’t claim any credit for that.
Marc Sani 13:26
I’ve often reflected back on that decision to work out a licensing agreement with the time the Dutch vNu, which I have no qualms in saying that was the worst publishing company I’ve ever worked for in my life. And if it had stayed with vNu, which later became part of Nielsen, I think bicycle retailer would be gone. So the making the move, and you were you were integral to that. And the board, of course, tend to accept that licensing agreement. And I know that Chris gaggle was one of the few who didn’t think it was such a good idea. And he later he later said, I was wrong on that. Yeah, it’s turned out to be a very good revenue source for the NBDA. I think you were able to use the money that we generated to do a lot of things for the dealers, and at the same time, allow us to have some sort of a growth pattern, which VNU would never do. I think that helped contribute to the ongoing success of the magazine. So being with NBDA, I consider to have been a real, a real plus for getting out from under the corporate structure as the new corporate structure works out.
Fred Clements 14:44
Well, very light structure, I think.
Marc Sani 14:48
Well, that’s a reasonable structure, you know, wasn’t a crazy structure that we were dealing with. It made sense. Small magazines rarely fare well under a big corporate umbrella, the allocated overheads, the constant drive for more revenue at the same time as they squeeze your capacity to, to do editorial content to or to travel or whatever your bottom line looks excellent, is doomed many a magazine and I would say the brain was on that path when we made the switch over the aging NBDA.
Fred Clements 15:26
So you were in places publisher. And one of the things I remember through these, what I would call the later middle years was the recession of 2008 2009. And I’m thinking, well, what’s Mark going to do with this because NBDA didn’t have resources to really help bring out it, you had to find a way to cut costs. And I think it’s a testament to you and your your relationship with the staff, that the way you did it was they agreed to temporary cuts in their pay and commissions. And so your staff really rallied around around the cause. And took those pay cuts. And that allowed and NBDA took less and, and it really kept it going. What do you think about those years?
Marc Sani 16:11
A couple of things, we acted quickly, we have to thank your better half Julie for helping with all the logistics, but we laid off staff, we let go of our art director and went to a contractor. Everybody did take a 10 or 15% pay cut immediately, the reps took a substantial cut in commissions. You know, we just did some all around belt tightening. And as it turned out, we really did not miss our revenue goals by much as i recall. But we made some fairly draconian moves right away. And at that time, too, we were doing the daily for Outdoor Retailer. And we had added a couple of people to the staff to help us with that. That was a twice a year project. And it was quite immense. Actually, we had to do a lot of work in a short period of time. Plus go to Salt Lake City, where Outdoor Retailer was being held. And so we let those two staff members go as well. But I think we did it quickly, we did it with some amount of grace. And everybody could see what was happening with the recession, really was a lot of kickback from staff over here over the temporary pay cuts, nor with the sales staff in rafter. Remember, these are these were commissioned sales staff, they didn’t have a base salary at all. And they all took a hit as well. So everybody took a hit. We got through it, you know, relatively unscathed. from a financial standpoint, relative being relative. Yeah, we were able to continue, we didn’t lay we didn’t lay off the key component that makes a magazine successful. And that was the editors, the editorial staff remained intact, so that we could continue to provide updates every day on the web, plus, continue to produce 18 issues of the magazine. And I think that’s another reason why the magazine survived. So like I say, relatively unscathed, at least from an outsider looking in, you really couldn’t have told the difference between our operation
Fred Clements 18:30
the 18 times a year thing that, you know, until I got in there and could actually see how it all worked. When you’re challenged to cut costs, the temptation would be to cut it back to just be monthly and reduce costs that way, but you never did that. That was pretty impressive. It worked. What’s what was behind the 18 versus 12, during during tough times?
Marc Sani 18:53
Well, again, I firmly believe that you have to maintain at least to your outside readers, perception that you’re strong. And and particularly to advertise using that, you know, you’ve got a plan. When you see magazines cutting back on their frequency, particularly during the recession, it usually means that there’s other problems within the magazine. And we didn’t have those kinds of problems. We didn’t have circuit circulation problem, we knew who our circuit was going to we knew what our direct costs were. We knew that we were getting advertising from a variety of sources, so that we didn’t feel like we needed to cut back to 12 times and our cost of production was relatively low. I mean, people forget that, you know, printing cost by then it started to really come down and they’re even cheaper today. The postage bill was almost as much as the print though. And so it didn’t take a lot of advertising dollars to really keep those additional six, six issues alive and well. And people seem to Forget that sometimes when you’re talking about the print side of the business, and of course, we were getting revenue from our website as well, which helped, the margins are much better on the web, they are in print. So, you know, just kind of balancing everything together, it made a lot of sense to keep the 18 time issues,
Fred Clements 20:21
as you mentioned, the website continue to grow in terms of the amount of revenue from it, the ads that could be placed, but you’re kind of stuck in the sense that there’s only so many spots on the website in that era, you couldn’t really expand beyond a certain ceiling. And then there’s the homepage. And I remember we were very challenged to talk about moving some of the eyeballs in deeper in more exposure to ads there. We never really figured that one out, it’s still pretty much dominated by that homepage, I think.
Marc Sani 20:57
Well, I think that’s one of the problems with a news driven website. You could spin off newsletters, we could have spun off, say an international section. And of course, when you look at the masthead today on the web, you can click on it. But nobody really uses that. The way brains website was set up really was, here’s what we know today. And this is what we think is important or interesting. And people would just log into it every morning just to see what we had. And I still think that in many ways that is just simple, cost effective way to run a news website in a very small market, like the bicycle industry. We fretted a lot about a lot of things you know about growing the web, it just it to grow the web view, you have to make so many compromises at the end of the day. It’s very, very difficult, particularly in that time period, when our print publication was doing so very well. I don’t know it was a real bet. That’s a real balancing act. So we managed to we managed to get through for a long time balancing the web, web and print side of the book inside of the business. You know, I think it was really, you know, and I again, I give you a lot of credit to give the board a lot of credit for standing behind us and letting us do what we thought we should do. Doesn’t mean we did everything right. We did apparently more things right than we did wrong.
Fred Clements 22:34
Yeah. But one one thing among many that I appreciated working with you is your willingness to try new things to run things up the flagpole look at some of the things that brain pulled off the dealer tours with, you know, that’s kind of out of the box thinking where editors would go into a town with with a few suppliers who would sponsor it and visit stores by bicycle that was created certainly the sea otter guide to aimed at consumers. You already mentioned the Outdoor Retailer show dailies we already also mentioned the interbike show dailies and doing a daily at a trade show is not an easy task, as you will know. And I think that may be underappreciated when you were doing both interbike and or a dailies that was a lot of work.
Marc Sani 23:20
It was a lot of work. But I personally liked doing it. And I think it’s just because of my newspaper background. But the dealer tours that was quite a it had a very good run with the magazine. But I’ll tell you how that started. And whoever’s listening, you might find this interesting. Back in 2007 or eight, I was invited to go on a to come to Taiwan to ride around the island with members of the cycling leadership in Taiwan, which included Tony lo and the host of Stila you from dello a host of people to do a ride around the island. And it was such an enlightening experience to spend time with these people riding a bike. I know it took us 10 days or something to do. And when I came back, I was just so excited about what cycling and talking to people, you know how much I learned and how how much fun it was. I sat down with Megan who was the pup Megan Tompkins who was a who was the editor 10 of us tell her about this and says Gosh, we should be able to do something like this here in the United States. You know, maybe we could get some you know, but the john Burke’s, the mics in yours, etc, etc, and do some sort of a tour like that. And then we said now that’ll never work. And I have to give credit to Megan for saying well why don’t we visit dealers and and so I do give Megan great credit for kind of shifting that conversation to you know, how do we do a dealer tour How do we go out and meet with dealers. And from there, we just built this program of selling sponsorship to various companies who wanted to ride bikes and go visit dealers in selected regions of the country. I think giant was our first bicycle sponsor, Tony lo came over from Taiwan to join that first ride, which is I think you were on Fred. I was in Southern California, in Orange County, that was our very first one. And it was kind of a rousing success, we were able to write web news about all the dealers we visited that day. And then we were able to repurpose that and put it into a special section of the magazine, you know, Orange County dealer tour. And we were doing, I believe, three a year. And we visited so many great regions of the country. And it was a it was a actually kind of a perk for the editors, we went to some outstanding places and saw many outstanding dealers. And we worked with the NBDA, of course, in selecting the dealers and with our sponsors, so very much of a cooperative effort between the NBDA and suppliers who participated in that program. You know, they don’t do that anymore. So there’s reasons why Now, of course, we have COVID, which would make it damn near impossible to do. But we had great sponsors, great sponsors, giant Fuji, the list goes on, who’s this finish line finish line was with us for a long time. You know, and they wrote with this as well, and that dealers and talk to dealers, about what was going on in their shops and what was going on in their area and region. I think everybody benefited from it. And we were able to, to see parts of the country that we never got to see before people for bikes, by the way was the sponsor. And they would set us up with some advocacy folks. And usually, we would find an advocate in a city who would guide us from shop to shop, which made it a whole lot easier, because it was a little bit of a logistic nightmare. And of course, Julie Kelly, still does some stuff for the magazine was a superb organizer, wall, this, getting all these disparate entities to work together was no easy task. And she did a great job.
Fred Clements 27:16
I still remember I think it was the Salt Lake City Tour that I did with you all. And we’re going to take a train from one part of the state up to another little commuter train. And so we’re standing there with our bikes and the train pulls in and Julie pulls out of her pocket, all the tickets, she had already organized tickets for everyone on the tour to get on the train. We didn’t have to do anything except Get on. Wonderful. Well, you got some great content out there.
Marc Sani 28:27
We got amazing editorial content. Yeah,
Fred Clements 28:31
I remember that that one in Southern California. Also, when Tony lo came from Taiwan, he really the really one of the leading characters in the entire industry. And, you know, in my trip to Taiwan, you know, I sort of discovered he was very, very into food. You know, he really liked fine dining and he would always make it a point of pride to when we got together in Taiwan to go to a nice place and but you know, publishing works on a different level. So as I recall, we went to a Mexican food restaurant, it was good buy Mexican food, Southern California standards, but I looked over to Tony who’s eating this goofy burrito thing and I said, how is it and he said, it’s good, because the gentleman would never say anything negative.
Marc Sani 29:16
No. Yes, the food in Taiwan is is excellent indeed.
Big Gear Show 29:25
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Fred Clements 30:13
So at some point during those what I would call later middle years, you moved from publisher into an editorial role. Megan Tompkins was named publisher but and Lynette Carr pa was named editor, what caused you to decide to move in from publishing into editorial? And how did that all come about?
Marc Sani 30:32
At the time, there was a lot of talk, rightfully so that, you know, a transition needed to be considered. I was getting any younger, I think, I think I was what, maybe 67 give or take. The question became, you know, how much longer one do I want to do this and being a person of a certain age was I missing out on something was I not as sharp as I should be about emerging trends, I actually fretted over this. And in talking with you, we decided that, you know, maybe Megan, Megan should step in and become a publisher and, and, you know, take the magazine, and maybe a more youthful directions than, you know, as old geezers, the same time we were promoted Lynette to editor. And I would say and entirely through brains. 30 years, we have had any number of strong women on our staff. The first woman we hired was back in 1994. Jill, Jan off, there’s so many still remember her. And we’ve always had a fairly progressive mindset about women and on our staff, at that time, to have a woman publisher and a woman editor in the bicycle world was still a that was quite unusual.
Fred Clements 31:55
She tried some new things herself, there was a triathlon section that she tried and kept driving the magazine forward. Unfortunately for her, she was at the head of things when the magazine became really revenue challenged, you know, as many in publishing have faced that we’ve lost thousands of newspapers, as the internet becomes more important for advertising and all of that. traditional print publications have really struggled. And so the magazine, they some revenue drops, as with many publishing ventures during these times, really challenges to survival when you have a fixed overhead cost, and declining revenue. It’s a it’s an aka not a pretty sight. And so it was struggled there for a while. And then of course, the excrement hit the fan a little bit with interbike equally challenged, which impacted the show dailies. So that was a really challenging time. In you were there for it. How did that feel?
Marc Sani 32:54
A couple of things. Let me let me talk about interbike for a minute. I sort of blame the industry to a large degree for interbike struggles. There was this one there was this feeling that interbike should leave Las Vegas feeling which I shared I you know, it’s time to move on that try something different. Salt Lake, of course, would have been my preferred venue if we made the move at some point in time. But mostly, once the major companies who specialize the tracks the giants and stuff started to pull out of the show. It sounded the death knell for interbike in many ways, and I certainly wrote in editorialized about that more than once. So when I look back upon interbike demise, I do lay a lot of the blame on the major exhibitors, because they also took away their dealers doing their own data that their dealer shows. And so I think that broke up some of the camaraderie that everybody felt when they came to interbike. Back in the 90s. And throughout the mid 2000s. There was a shared experience. You saw people that you hadn’t seen for a year, eaters could meet and see new products. But once all the majors pulled out, and I think you probably would agree, theater attendance started to fall. And that made the show less intriguing for for midline companies and such. And then, of course, the decision to move to out of Las Vegas and Reno. That really was the death knell there’s no question about it. Even though the outdoor demo at the Reno everybody seemed to like but Reno as the as a convention city just wasn’t prepared. It wasn’t ready for a show of that size and a way away it went and once the trade show left to I think the industry has become less focused on the overall good and much more focused on what’s good for each company’s bottom line, which is fair enough. But I think the demise the trade show has been a bad move for the industry personally. Ironically, at the same time, sea otter has risen to major importance to the industry. Unfortunately, dealers don’t go to sea otter, but it really became a gathering point with the bicycle Leadership Conference, that Frank was managing Franco Hannon, who founded their who own sea otter, that really seen that at the supplier side of the business, that while the dealer, the dealer side of the business has been somewhat less focused, it’s certainly been more scattered. I think there’s great advantage for dealers to get together with other dealers interbike provided that space.
Fred Clements 35:56
And though that was a, obviously a tough time for a lot, including the NBDA that was overseeing still. And, you know, because NBDA lost a lot of revenue that interbike had provided, certainly brain advertising was down. So that was down, it was a really, very difficult time. And you were there through all of that glory as well. And then I think the starting was 2019 is when a NBDA exited and pocket outdoor meal media took over ownership actually sold, rather than licensed to Felix McGowan and pocket outdoor publisher velonews, among other things, and the offices moved to Boulder, Colorado, where velonews was is headquartered, Steve frothingham, who had been with the magazine a long time was was named editor for this. And so how is that all that to go through and experience when you’re, you’re not really in charge. But all this stuff is happening?
Marc Sani 36:55
Well, I think the NBDA certainly was under severe financial pressures with the purchase of BBI, and the draining of revenue from the magazine and the website, something had to give at some point, certainly NBDA was in any, any position to take a loss on on the operation of the magazine, as it was constructed or maintained. At that time, it looked like you would be taking some serious losses down the line. And at that point, under Brandee Lepak’s leadership changes were made. And we negotiated an arrangement with between interbike and the NBDA. And pocket outdoor media to take over the magazine. And there we were in February of 2019.
Fred Clements 37:45
Yeah, it’s that long, I guess. Yeah,
Marc Sani 37:48
yeah, it really hasn’t been that long. So the magazine continues to publish. It’s down to 12 issues a year. It’s down to two staff members, Steve, of course, and Dean Jacobi, who’s now in North Carolina, he went back back home after having moved to Boulder freelance budget. And that’s where it sits today.
Fred Clements 38:11
I would echo your, your comments about Brandee Lepak at NBDA, who when things were melting down, you know, she was simply a board member who stepped in as a volunteer to try to write the ship. So she had office leases to get out from under she had a contract with interbike to negotiate she had the brain sail to oversee the BB BBI. There’s a lot of stuff that she did as a volunteer. And I think, you know, that’s under acknowledged by many is the very difficult, very stressful job she she had and kept brain alive, kept NBDA alive. And I just wanted to acknowledge that since we’re since we’re chatting here. No, it was a very, very, very stressful time for everybody, including me. And Megan, of course, and but it’s easy to look back in hindsight and go, I wish I could have done this or I should have done that and what have you. But hindsight is only good if you’re thinking about what you’ve learned in the past and how you might apply it to the future. But when you’re in the heat of the moment, you do what you think you need to do. And I have to say that Brandee certainly stepped up and did what she thought needed to be done. could it have been done differently. Who knows, but it got done. Well, I think that raised family a little bit of desperation. and edit did. One could say that it kept the NBDA alive and well and it seems like you’re on a on a more fruitful path at the moment. The NBDA I do give her great credit for that. And so here we are, here we are so we’re in the presence. Moment. One aspect of this conversation I was looking forward to is the the future to try to hear from you how you see things going forward. I I’m close to it, obviously and a fan of brain I hope it’s for its great success going forward. But I know you feel the same. What What do you think the future holds for bicycle retailer and the bike industry?
Marc Sani 40:24
Well, I think COVID has really upset the applecart for everybody, including bicycle retailer, and many companies within the industry as well. But consolidation is a fact, on the supplier side, when you consolidate, there’s few fewer advertising opportunities or sponsorship opportunities. Most of the major companies just handle their own advertising winners to dealers, or to consumers, they don’t really need a trade magazine, either on the web or in print. That’s just a fact. Whether it’s brain or any other publication out there, the bigger companies really handle their own their own marketing, they really don’t need a third party intermediary anymore. That’s a huge problem. And in publishing, in general, Facebook, Google, Amazon, pick your poison. same holds true for dealers, I mean, they you know, Dieter wants to buy some kinds of parts or whatever he or she is just as likely to find it on Amazon, and she will find it from kvp. And maybe at a better price. It’s an extremely competitive market out there. That is that really doesn’t need a trade magazine anymore. Now, I disagree with that. But that’s how a lot of companies feel we don’t really need brain or we really don’t need an outdoor retailer, we’re an sRGB, or whatever the case may be, we can get our message across and that we don’t have, we won’t have editors tinkering with our message, or asking questions, we can just deliver what we want to deliver when we want to deliver it. And that’s the way things are at the moment, I think it will come back, I don’t think advertising will ever come back like it has, I think for brain. And I’ve urged it more more than once. Really brain needs to start moving aggressively into a subscription model of some sort. When you move into a subscription model, or a membership model, as they like to call it, you really need to deliver outstanding content people really do not want to pay for for stuff that they can they either get their free in their in their in their email, or, or what have you really need to amp up your content level. And that’s a challenge. In my my own thinking, the print magazine, it may be around for a while longer, but I just don’t see it. Long term. I think the trade magazines side, particularly brain will be primarily web driven. The question is, you know, can Palmer or any organization for that matter, figure out a way to make that transition and maintain and improve editorial quality without editorial quality. And trade news is highly specific. It doesn’t cross over easy. When you write about the new program or something that the tracker specialized or giant or whatever is doing, that does not translate into Consumer News. So it’s hard to share that content. A lot of difficulties with trade publications. From a publishing standpoint, you really need to have staff that pay attention to the market, and know who to call and where to look for news. That’s a challenge. That’s a challenge.
Fred Clements 43:52
It’s certainly a challenge for brain. It’s a challenge for publishing everywhere. I mean, I wrote during this COVID I haven’t been writing outside, I’ve been writing my trainer in the garage and listening to podcasts. And my one of my favorite is the New York Times podcast, they do a daily podcast on a topic and interview people. Is there a future for a non printed brain? As you say, maybe it’s sometime in the future? But do you think there are other areas where brain could move into the future? You know, it’s it’s I’m not saying it’s working for the New York Times Really? I don’t know if there’s a revenue model that supports it, but anything else that you see brain could or should do digitally?
Marc Sani 44:33
Well, I think you’ve got to get your house in order first. I mean, you know, by the way, I’m not involved in the management of brain I just can contribute to it. So I’m speaking a little bit off the cuff here but you really need to if you’re going to have a successful digital strategy in a narrow niche like the bicycle industry, you need to have a first class list for emails and potential For tax if you can get mobile phone numbers and that sort of thing. So you have to go back to the basics, you have to build up a really strong and viable circulation list. Once you’ve done that, now you can start thinking about more aggressively charging for subscriptions, and or sponsorships or other parts of that program. It’s just to have always argued, and Terry really is the one who taught me that circulation is key is he, as many circulators say, circulation gets them, editorial keeps them, one of those old sayings that you have a cure, often in publishing, the importance of that mailing list that whether it’s email or, or text, or however you want to use it, you’ve got to have a really clean list, and then all things in the digital age become possible. But without that, and without a sound editorial strategy. It’s a tough road who out there a tough road?
Fred Clements 46:08
Yeah, no, the of the many things that surprised me in working with you all for the years that I was privileged to the circulation was one of the biggest eye openers, the amount of time and effort and money invested in overseeing the circulation to keep the circulation list fresh to efficiently drop off people who left the industry to add them when they that’s not an easy task. It really surprised me how hard that was.
Marc Sani 46:33
Yeah, and I think I think a lot of companies today have kind of given up on circulation a little bit, they just seem to think that whatever we do is going to get out there. And I can’t speak for palm per se, because I don’t really know what they do with circulation. But in general, without a strong circulation driver within a company, whether it’s bicycle retailer, or any, any company for that matter and publishing, particularly in these narrow markets, you know, bicycling, cycling, is a narrow market. You know, we see a lot of bikes out there, we see a lot of news now without everybody wants to buy a bicycle and the New York Times has been writing about it, all this stuff is going on. But when you’re writing about the business side is much more detailed and much more specific. So editorial strategy now becomes very important in combination with circulation. And at that point, then you can build out your advertising market or your sponsorship market, or where your subscription price or a combination of all those things to drive revenue. So it’s complicated business, you know, we cannot rely on advertising alone anymore. It’s just you just can’t do it. And you’re not going to succeed and you’re not going to be able to grow, you just sort of have to write off traditional forms of advertising. And ironically, we’re now seeing a tremendous drop off. In web advertising across the publishing world. More people are using ad blockers, we’ll be interested to see what Apple does. Next year, they were proposing a an opt in function so that you can opt in or opt out of getting ads, there’s a lot of stuff going on out there that sort of further depressing the advertising side of the business. But I’m also highly skeptical of paid content. You know, most consumers and most readers can read through the crap. So you got to be careful with that. You see a lot of programmatic advertising nowadays, you’ll see these crazy wacky ads pop up on various websites that have no relation whatsoever to the content that you’re but it’s pennies on the dollar. But you know, a lot of magazine publishers are looking for pennies on the dollar show. I don’t know it’s it’s an interesting world I are still bullish about, about the impact of news on on the industry and and in general, it’s not going to go away. But how we, how we structure it and how we pay for it, how we present it. I wish I was 40 years younger. I think it’s kind of an exciting time and and, you know, an odd sort of way that we move on?
Fred Clements 49:26
Yes. And you keep reading the grapevine. That’s a good thing.
Marc Sani 49:30
I do. Yeah, I do. I don’t know how well it’s received out there. I get the occasional email. But you know, I think people still read it. Now it Yes.
Fred Clements 49:43
Ross with a point of view, and it’s not bland, and I think that if anything, editorial quality and being interesting is still a driver of a lot of people’s information lives. So
Marc Sani 49:58
yeah, yeah. Nobody ever said I lacked a point of view.
Fred Clements 50:05
Anything else marc? Yeah, as we sort of wrap up here, I think we’re about at our time, anything.
Marc Sani 50:12
No, all I can say is I’m glad to be back in Santa Fe where I can spend an inordinate amount of time outdoors. I do a tremendous amount of hiking and mountain biking and the occasional road ride. If we get any decent snow, I’ll be skiing here soon, hopefully. And which is great. Yeah, yeah, we’ve we just got seven inches of snow the other day. It’s already fast melting away. Technically, we’re in a drought still here in in New Mexico, in southern Colorado. But you know, we’ll see. Yeah. But if you have to be someplace away from COVID, this is the place to be. I’m sorry to hear that. You’re spending so much time on a trainer.
Fred Clements 50:57
Oh, it’s, it’s a it’s a nightmare. I’ll tell you but keeps the legs moving a little bit at least. So
Marc Sani 51:03
yeah, yeah. Well, I could say as I probably haven’t been in as good a shape and in quite some time.
Fred Clements 51:12
Yeah, well, so thanks for carving out an hour of, of your time here as a historian in the bicycle industry and bicycle retailer, and definitely enjoy talking to you again, Mark and keep on trucking.
Marc Sani 51:25
Well, I’ll certainly try. We’ll just have to see how things evolve here over the next few months for sure. And of course, the election. You know, I’m all in for Biden. Yeah.
Fred Clements 51:39
I did know that.
Marc Sani 51:42
I give run bertola a lot of grief use of a different political persuasion. And but Ron and I still talk a lot. We stock a couple of times a week and show for politics. And of course, he’s very happy that the Dodgers won, and of course the series so I had to give him some I had a needle him about the COVID guy at quick the Dodgers and stuff today so yeah,
Fred Clements 52:09
Ron’s are quite a time. quite a long time with the bicycle retailer. Nice. But he’s the account manager now. You know, handling the advertising, and all of that. Yeah. I guess we’re done. Thank you, Mark.
Marc Sani 52:23
Okay, well, if this fun, okay.
Fred Clements 52:26
Okay. All right. Bye.
Marc Sani 52:28
Bye.
Rod Judd 52:28
This has been bicycle retail radio by the National bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership, and member benefits, join us at nbda.com
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After spending 12 years as a writer and editor, Fred Clements worked as executive director and vice president for the National Bicycle Dealers Association for 28 years. He then moved to Interbike in a retail relations role, later transitioning into consulting. He enjoys helping the NBDA with podcasts from time to time and rides about 3,500 miles each year on his road bike.
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The NBDA has been here since 1946, representing and empowering specialty bicycle dealers in the United States through education, communications, research, advocacy, member discount programs, and promotional opportunities. As shops are facing never-before-seen circumstances, these resources offer a lifeline. Together, we will weather this. We at the NBDA will not waver in our commitment to serving our members even during this challenging time—but we need your support.
Now is the time to become a member as we join together to make one another stronger. Whether you’re a retailer or an industry partner, your membership in the NBDA is one of the best investments you’ll make this year.
Learn more about the benefits of being a member and join now.
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