HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
•
FEBRUARY 2013
85
NEWBURY COMICS:
A DIFFERENT TUNE
What’s the sound of a record store folding?
The sighs of music fans who remember the
clerk who sold them their first Bauhaus
album. MIT dropout Mike Dreese, who
co-founded Boston music mecca Newbury
Comics in 1978, wasn’t about to let that happen to his stores.
In 2009, faced with a nearly 80 percent drop in music and DVD
sales, he diversified into clothing, toys and novelty items. While
Newbury isn’t out of the woods yet, 2011 was the chain’s second
most profitable year ever, and clothing
sales are growing by about 60 percent a
year. “The one advantage we hadwas that
we actually started out as a comic book
store,” Dreese says. “That’s all we sold for
two years. So we never pigeonholed our-
selves as only music merchants.”
“
WE NEVER
PIGEONHOLED
OURSELVES AS
ONLYMUSIC
MERCHANTS.”
THE ATLANTIC
:
CRACKING THE CODE
In 2007, the 150-year-old
Atlantic Monthly
was facing an existential threat from digital
rivals. Five years on,
The Atlantic
(
it dropped
the “Monthly”) is a multimedia powerhouse.
Its trio of Web-based titles publish 100-plus
items a day, up from about five in 2007,
and their online readership has doubled
within a year to reach 18 million a month;
revenues, too, have doubled. By meeting
the challenges of the digital age while
staying true to the magazine’s tradition,
says Atlantic Media Co. president Justin
B. Smith, “we are on our way to ‘cracking
the code’ for developing anewsustainable
business model for great journalism.”
GRANTLAND:
RISING ABOVE THE CHATTER
WhenESPN’sBillSimmonslaunchedtheonline
magazine Grantland in 2011, he was pitching
his hat into a ring brimming with headwear.
Described by senior editorial director Dan
Fierman as “a home for smart, sophisticated
sports and culture fans,” Grantland seemed to be overlooking
the fact that such people were being
pulled in a thousand directions. Yet the
site has averaged 2.2 million unique visi-
tors amonth, and the numbers are rising.
The secret, says Fierman, is to apply old-
fashioned magazine principles—like
quality journalism—to new media.
“
People are always looking for ways to
waste timeatwork,” he says, “andwewant
to give them the best one possible.”
“
WE AREON
OURWAY TO
DEVELOPINGA
NEWSUSTAIN-
ABLE BUSINESS
MODEL
FORGREAT
JOURNALISM.”
GREENLIGHT BOOKSTORE:
KEEPING IT REAL
Brick-and-mortar bookstores are considered
to be the diplodocus of bookselling, a single
lumbering step away from extinction. One
way to stay alive, according to the folks at
Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore, is to play to
your strengths, to make the fact that people have to physically
visit your shop something to celebrate.
“
We believe that being a bookstore where
people can come to shop and congregate
is vital,” says co-owner Rebecca Fi ing,
who’s also a firm believer in the personal
touch. Book lovers have responded:
Greenlight’s sales have been growing at a
rate of around 25 percent a year. Not bad
for a business that’s supposed to have one
foot in the tar pit.
“
WE BELIEVE
THAT BEINGA
BOOKSTORE
WHERE PEOPLE
CANCOME
TOSHOP AND
CONGREGATE
IS VITAL.”
I ’ M S T I L L S T A N D I N G
No matter what kind of business you’re in, it can be hard to stay on your feet these days. There are a number
of industries, however, for which the economic landscape has seemed especially wobbly. We take a look
at six potentially vulnerable companies that have refused to lie down.
“
PEOPLE ARE
ALWAYS LOOK-
ING FORWAYS
TOWASTE TIME
ATWORK.WE
WANT TOGIVE
THEMTHE BEST
ONE POSSIBLE.”
DEEZER:
THE ROUTER LESS TRAVELED
While blamed for the demise of traditional
distribution outlets, the digital music indus-
try has troubles of its own. The big issues are
piracy—more than25percent of Internet users
admit to visiting sites that run roughshod over
copyright laws—and an increasingly clu ered playing field. The
music-streaming French outfit Deezermay have come upwith a
solution: Stay away from the most lucrative market of all. “Our
success stems fromour focus on growing
markets, rather than following others
into the U.S.,” says CEO Axel Dauchez.
And how’s that working out? As of late
last year Deezer had 26 million users in
160
countries and had nailed $130 million
in investment capital, so ... not too shabby.
FORD:
CARS FOR EVERYONE
When the recessionhit, certainU.S. automakers
had to turn to the government for a bailout—
but not Ford. In 2006 it had refinanced by
offering its iconic blue oval logo (among other
assets) as collateral in a series of hefty bank
loans. “We had the eyes of the Ford family on us,” says Raj Nair,
group VP of global product development. “We said we’d sell the
furniture before we’d cut back on the
product plan.” Sixyears later, Fordhas con-
solidated its international fleets into one
global set of vehicles, allowing it to bring
carstomarketfaster.Fordhasalsoinvested
extensively in R&D, partnering with Dow
Automotive to work on such advances as
low-cost carbon fiber–composite frame
materials. It even got its blue oval back.
“
WE SAID
WE’D SELL THE
FURNITURE
BEFOREWE’D
CUT BACKON
THE PRODUCT
PLAN.”
“
OUR SUCCESS
STEMS FROM
OUR FOCUS
ONGROWING
MARKETS.”
DAUCHEZ
NAIR
FITTING
SMITH
FIERMAN
DREESE
T H E
H E M I
I N N O V A T I O N S P E C I A L
RICHARD A. BLOOM (SMITH); AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER COMPANY (DREESE)
