Naval Gazing

Under its post-war constitution, Japan is not allowed a navy, only a Self-Defence Force. Yet, today, the country has one of the largest, most sophisticated fleets in the world. Tensions with North Korea and China have also seen the country increasingly debating its military future. Monocle was given unique access to the fleet and asked leading analysts to assess the future of the region.
Chinese Cheques

All over Africa, Chinese labourers are hard at work building railways, roads and national stadiums. In return, the continent’s developing countries are selling their oil and iron ore to the Chinese. The figures are staggering: in 1999 trade between Africa and China was valued at €1.5bn, by 2000 it had risen to €31bn and by 2010 it is expected to hit €77bn. To underline their interest in the continent, on 30 January, the Chinese President Hu Jintao began an eight-nation African tour. Monocle travelled across the continent to witness the impact of the investment and diaspora.
Baja or Bust

If you’ve had enough of the Antwerp to Brussels commute, relocate your life. Every month we’ll take you to an emerging business hub and tell you everything you need to build a new company and enjoy a better standard of living. This month we’re in Ensenada, the Mexican town pulling in the wine growers of California, yacht builders and a generation of sharp entrepreneurs.
Germany’s Bottle Bank

Germany is the eighth biggest exporter of wine, shipping 280 million litres in 2005; but it’s also the world’s largest importer of wine, buying 1.19 billion litres the same year. Like France, the country has struggled against New World vineyards. Now the Germans are fighting back with a winning marketing tool: novelty bottles.
Reel Rebel

For the past eight years, Assaad Taha’s company, Hot Spot, has been making films for the Al-Jazeera TV network. His mission? To uncover and objectively report injustices through Arab eyes, while staying firmly opposed “to the notion of neutrality”. Not an easy task in an increasingly unstable political arena.
Good Migrations

For most of the last century, Italy’s population flowed outwards. But as the country grew richer, the outside began to trickle in, from Eastern Europe, North Africa and Asia. Today, the country’s roughly three million immigrants are growing into their second generation. For the first time its schools are graduating students who sound Italian, feel Italian and are Italian, but trace their roots back to other countries, forcing Italians to ask what exactly does it mean to be Italian?
Família values

Tourism is Brazil’s fourth biggest earner, generating €8.5bn and sustaining 1.1m jobs. Last year, Rio de Janeiro received more than two million international and five million domestic visitors, an increase of 120 per cent since 2000. On the eve of this year’s Pan American Games in Rio, hotshot hotelier Rogério Fasano is opening a second property in Brazil’s carnivale capital.
Last stand

Shoe production in the US has dropped 85 per cent since 1995 and around 90 shoe factories have closed as companies shift production overseas. Iconic American brands such as Timberland, Converse, Sebago, Johnston & Murphy and GH Bass & Co have all left. One of three remaining bespoke shoemakers in the country, Russell Moccasin survives, thanks to its recasting as a luxury brand in the Far East.

Issue 1 / Global

Observation

The inspiration for this venture came about either in the living room of my Aunt Anita’s house in Toronto 32 years ago or around a table at Die Brücke in Hamburg circa 1991. Regardless of dates and location, the spark was the same – I’ve always been a fan of Germany’s news weeklies. From the age of six, my favourite magazines boasted yellow or orange borders. Whole afternoons could be lost flicking through back issues of ‘National Geographic’ and more recent issues of ‘der Spiegel’. A few years later, I developed a passion for ‘Stern’ with its bold photography, fondness for skin and racy subject matter.

When I left Canada for the UK in 1989, I never thought that I’d end up commuting between Heathrow and Hamburg’s Fuhlsbüttel airport on regular pitch missions to the magazines I so admired. In Hamburg, I managed to catch the tail end of Tempo magazine before it folded. It was there I met editor Anne Urbauer, who ended up going to Stern and was kind enough to keep me as one of her writers. Anne became both a mentor and generous commissioning editor, sending me on elaborate foreign assignments for the magazine. When she moved to the weekly newspaper Die Woche, I followed her. And when I was shot in Afghanistan in 1994, she helped me fight for compensation from the new-ish German news magazine Focus.

In London, I spent the next two years developing an idea for a new lifestyle magazine and in 1996 it finally hit newsstands as Wallpaper*. I edited the title up till mid 2002 and bought out the design agency Winkreative that I’d started under its umbrella. I wasn’t looking for new editorial outlets but, by 2004, I found myself with columns in the New York Times Magazine, NZZ am Sonntag and the weekend edition of the FT.

I wasn’t looking to start my own media venture either but a mix of reader feedback from my columns and casual consumer research at international airports (observing what magazines people buy before they head to their gates), conspired to make me think about developing a new project and call creative director Richard Spencer Powell out of editorial retirement. The brief we wrote was a simple one: a smart, forward looking, single edition global briefing for a highly mobile, international audience. We also decided it should:

01. Be a complete media brand with print, web and broadcast components
02. Deliver across all these areas in new formats
03. Focus on global affairs, business, culture, design and the best products/services on the market
04. Be an oasis from celebrities and low production values
05. Champion fresh talent for both words and pictures
06. Look ahead, not chase the ambulance
07. Accept no freebies
08. Likewise, not be given away for free
09. Open bureaux, so we have our own people on the ground
10. Do our bit to raise the bar

In May 2005 we pulled together cover and section concepts, that summer we brought our agency colleagues Saul, Rob and Rose into the mix for words and pictures and, by Christmas, finance directors Anna and Sabine had completed a business plan with my publisher designate Pam honing the ad proposition.

It took a trip to Japan, evening drinks in Sydney and a visit to Barcelona to raise the first round of funds and with the help of my friend Robyn Holt – who escaped Moscow to join as managing director – we completed the rest of our fundraising over dinner and more drinks in Stockholm.

With funding secured, Andrew Tuck left the Independent on Sunday to take up the post of editor. Throughout, my mentor Anne was a quiet yet influential adviser in the background.

We officially started work on this project in October and have quite literally covered the globe to deliver this debut issue of Monocle. Along the way we’ve opened bureaux in Tokyo and New York, headed up by Fiona Wilson and Ann Marie Gardner respectively, commissioned an original manga from writer and artist Takanori Yasaka and hired Dan Hill from the BBC to bring this to life on the web and other channels.

Monocle will have 10 print editions a year while developing both daily and weekly frequencies on monocle.com. If you have any comments, please forward them to me at tb@monocle.com. Before I sign off, there are a few people I would like to thank for helping bring Monocle to life: Maria, José, Diego, Sagra, Richard, Fumio, Peter, Magnus, PG, Nancy, Etsuko, Mina, Noriko, Jerry, John, Herr Nachmann, Dr Helling, Daniel, Joan, Anna, Kokubo-san, Rikard, Masumi, Eugen, Rico, Eva, Ola, Marcy, and most of all Mats and mom.

Naval Gazing

Chinese Cheques

Baja or Bust

Germany’s Bottle Bank

Reel Rebel

Good Migrations

Família values

Last stand

Europe Briefing

Africa/Middle East briefing

Asia briefing

Oceania briefing

Americas briefing

Business Briefing

Air of superiority

Star board

On the Shelf

Culture Briefing

Culture Briefing

Architecture/Design briefing

Fashion briefing

On the Money

Well Played

Push my Button

Light Fantastic

Sunday best

Diary of a movie deal

Trigger Happy

Shop Front

Kabul and Wireless

Man of the moment

Class act

Back to black

Inventory No. 1

Samurai Golf Clubs

Genoa

Ann Curry

La Chaux-de-Fonds

Observation

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