THE FASTER LANE / TYLER BRÛLÉ
Page one
It’s 2005, my five-year non-compete agreement (“don’t you even think about launching another magazine or we’ll sue your little pants off!”) has just expired and I’m ready to roll. I’ve got the idea for the mag, long-time creative director and friend Richard Spencer-Powell has already mocked up the covers and key pages, and Andrew Tuck is all set to resign from his comfy gig at The Independent. Little does the poor dear know what he’s signing up to. The planning is all going smoothly.
Jackie Deacon (our completely terrifying production director) knows what papers we’ll use, the furniture and phones are in place, and a couple of select advertisers have already committed to being in the launch issue. The only hitch is we don’t have the three million pounds required to make the whole thing happen. A few weeks into my newfound editorial freedom I have a meeting with a potential client who’s visiting from Barcelona. She wants to work with our agency and she’s in a rush. There’s a fluffy fur coat, multiple phones, fingers weighed down by chunky rings and of course there are enormous, smoky-tinted glasses. She’s on her way out of our building and she’s giving the offices one final inspection. “Where is this from? Who designed this? Where did you get that?” she asks without stopping. “And why is there no one working in this big room? So empty, no life. Why?”
I’m about to remind her that it is rather early on a Saturday and that I can’t imagine offices in Spain are packed at the weekend at such an hour either. But it’s clear that this is a woman who works round the clock and has her very own time zone so I explain that the idle space is for an upcoming magazine launch and that it’s going to...
“Magazine?! What kind? For who? Design? For a junger demographic? What’s ethpethial about it?” she asks (you really do need to read this with your best Spanish accent), checking the tag on an Artemide desk lamp.
“Do you have a business plan? I’ll let my CEO look at it.”
I’m about to give her my pitch but the door has already been swung open – she’s in the back of the car and about to become my biggest investor!
It took a bit longer to raise the other two million pounds but we got there in the autumn of 2006 and come mid-February 2007, Monocle hit newsstands. As mentioned in Andrew’s column yesterday it’s been a week of champagne-sipping, reminiscing and much laughter – particularly around the microphone, as we did a global ring-around to catch up with our editors and bureau chiefs on a speedy trip down memory lane for a very, very special edition of Monocle on Sunday.
While 14 isn’t a particularly special year, it does remind me of the crisis that we sailed into in 2008, somehow managing to emerge a more fully formed venture. It now feels like we’re sailing out of a storm (we really are, aren’t we?) and the past year has taught us much about sharpening our business, human nature and why we should have invested in a medical-sample lab ages ago. It was also a good reminder that we can only do what we do thanks to the newsstand owners and booksellers; the logistics teams; our ad partners; the technicians on our presses; the postman; our lovely baristas and super-regular café customers; and our readers and listeners. As we deliver a 24-hour-a-day radio station and deliver daily newsletters completely gratis, taking out a print or digital subscription is a great way to help us do the journalism. Thank you for being with us on this most wonderful journey. The party planning is well underway. More soon.