Smoke rules.
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ahh, stoked! 
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Just took a stroll into the large WHSmith in town to get the magazine for my morning coffee and read and they haven’t had any issued to them .
Seems only certain outlets have been sent some. The guy said he’s been asked quite a few times too.
Looks like a subscription then .
They have a list on the site showing which branches have it in.
Doh!
Cheers
Must be getting funded in some way from Route One right? Route one back page, route one rider on the cover, route one centrefold? Would much rather one of the big shoe companies than Route One but hopefully it won’t be too much of a non-sos ad in issues to come! I’m excited to see what other content they put out over the next year for sure.
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Isn’t one of the other current mags heavily subsidised by one of the big shoe companies already?
Good to have some variation, as there can’t be many people willing to stump up the cash for a new print mag in 2021.
Oh yeah all or most of the free mags have financial support and specific deals for certain riders on covers, features, etc- that comes from advertising contracts from the big shoe companies but for some reason it just seems a bit more legit to use those companies than a shop that undercuts and underprices all the local shops in the UK. Would happily rep Nike, Adidas, Cons, Vans, NB, but wouldn’t touch Route One with a shitty stick.
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Some of the ads are a strange one, full page Fracture skateboards (a R1 brand?), double page Osiris one and triple 8 helmets (distro TKC).
You’d have to think there is no Nike, Adidas, Cons, Vans, NB money involved (Lakai, Vans and Osiris ads, but doubt any of them are backing it finically). It has to have some R1 money behind it, right?
Though they are pushing SOS too…
To me, it doesn’t look like there is R1 funding behind it beyond the pages of ads they’ve bought.
R1 had a pretty good relationship with Sidewalk, right? So, with two people from Sidewalk behind this then it makes sense they’ve jump on board.
Also, for Osiris - and god knows who distributes that these days - but the third partner behind the mag distributed them for probably 20 years, so it stands to reason they’d be in there…although I genuinely thought they’d gone under.
Finally, on the spots shoe company thing - Nike and adi weren’t in Free for the first few issues, where they? Or maybe it was Nike and Cons? I think if you look into it, those brands probably haven’t advertised in mags as much as you think they have.
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To add; also, isn’t the mag backed/distributed by Rock Solid Distribution? I can’t see that they’d be trying to do that for another distribution companies mag.
Fair enough, I guess they just took the ad money then? Which you can’t blame them for, if no-one else was willing to stump it up. It’s only the first one, so don’t want to jump to the wrong conclusion.
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I mean, even if everyone else was willing to stump up the money…you’d still take it, no?
I can’t imagine the print game is very easy.
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Yeah hopefully the ad game gets better with more issues coming out! I think the contacts where probably there and it was an easy shout for the first issue to get going. I know it’s aimed at being an accessible mag to so maybe having kooky ads is part of the appeal for younger readers too. Although fracture ads def make me feel queasy haha
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Yeah completely love a kooky ad, just with this being aimed at beginner skaters and kids and stuff, I don’t want a good magazine like this to legitimise getting big corpo skate shops getting promoted to an audience who doesn’t know different, would be cool to see new skaters getting introduced to our culture through supporting and buying from skater owned shops, and why thats good for their local scene.
Especially when a lot of new skaters are probably going to be buying stuff online and for the cheapest price and don’t know about the benefits of buying local etc
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I always thought of it like a Newspaper and you had to have some shit in there to keep it going. Haven’t had a chance to read mine yet.
Would be even more nostalgic to go read in a local shop.
To be fair though, even if there is a huge presence from a big online retailer behind the mag, they did have a double page spread of indie skate shop ads.
And a full page ad for Supereight who I’d imagine are direct competition to R1.
What does that mean?
Where the fuck are the Freestlye ads offering a mini ramp for £850? That’s the main question here.
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