Be-mag 10-year-anniversary - Part 1 - 07/03/10

With issue 23 (out soon) we are also celebrating Be-Mag's 10 year anniversary, We are running a big piece on it in this print issue, but we will also put out content we have gathered over the years online on Be-Mag. To start this we will run the article online which is being run in issue 23. Read about the history of Be-Mag and how it all fell in place in 2 parts. Part 1 features the road until the print days.

-Jon Julio I-view in Issue 12 / one of the Highlights in the Be-mag Print History

"Welcome to issue 23 and the tenth anniversary of Be-Mag! The following pages will give you an insight into the history and future of Be-Mag. We’ve experienced the ups and downs of the industry and we've successfully started a media business in rolling, without corporate backing or previous media work experience. We’re extremely proud of this achievement as we’ve been dedicated to rolling and pushing the sport for a decade, now making us the longest running rollerblading publication. Over the next few months, as well as in print, we will be detailing our history online, giving you all an insight into the Be-Mag world and what makes us tick. Once again thank you for reading and supporting Be-Mag.

Starting out
End of 1996 / start of ‘97 was where the adventure began. During the Christmas holidays in 1996 I realised that as I loved rollerblading, and I also enjoyed using the internet, and I wanted to combine the two. This was at the time when there was already a bunch of online mags and tons of print mags. I wanted to create a new way of communicating to people about what was going on in the rollerblading world, and I came up with the idea of launching an e-mail based newsletter sent out to the masses directly. We then started collecting e-mail addresses and sent out a monthly newsletter with a summary of what was happening in rolling, interviews, reviews and all the content we could gather. We got in contact with a lot of people from the industry and soon reached out to a global audience. The first mailing took place around New Years 1996/1997, so Be-Mag was essentially born early 1997. Some epic moments in the early days included being the first source to review Espionage (a Dave Temple movie) and being the first to cover contests from all around the world online. We built up the core of our contributors during this time and the team then took us to the next level.

The website
Over time we realized that we needed to offer a new option to people besides the e-mail newsletter and that it was also limiting the way that we could communicate with people and portray skating. First steps included some not so hot websites, but soon Stuff took it to the next level by launching the first Be-Mag website and then later on launching the current site. He is also in charge of bringing you a new website, but more on that topic later. The first website was not update driven but more a magazine. This meant that we released issues every 2-3 months, which proved to be a very good testing ground for the print mag later on. This gradually evolved over time and has now become an update based website. We started another important and integral part of Be-Mag at this time: The Be-Mag messageboard. It rapidly became the number one source of online communication for rollerbladers in the world. No matter where you are worldwide, someone in the rollerblading community will be online at the same time on the Be-Mag messageboard. It has become bigger than websites like skateboarding.com and tonyhawk.com, not bad for a completely self-run website lacking any corporate backing. We had offers for a takeover of the site around 2000 during the economic boom, but we said ‘No thank you’ and continued to do our thing, while virtually all the other extreme websites with major corporate backing from the time all closed down a year or two later. It shows that you can't buy into a sport and automatically be successful, it needs to be done by people with pure love and dedication towards what they do. This is what makes be-mag.com so unique. We come up with specially produced content for the website, stay on top of news and constantly bring new formats and ideas to the website."

to be continued...


-Oli Short I-view in Issue 12

Tags: 10-years-anniversary be-mag be-mag issue 23 be-mag print be-mag print issue 23 issue 12 jon julio oli short