Inside Kung-Fu (CFW Enterprises) sold

[GeneChing]

http://www.finwin.com/finwin/home/headlinesdisplay.cfm?story=8072463&nojs=false

[TangLangCh'uan]

i used to think these guys put out a decent magazine...until i got a subscription to both theirs and yours for christmas last year.....they sold out as soon as they:

-started publishing articles with all these neo-"masters" and their made-up styles and systems....i'm sorry, but i'm not sold on this so-called "slam-set".

-got too wrapped up in the latest kung fu hottie.

-published a cover story on halle berry and flippin' "catwoman"

-started getting called on errors they've made in their articles on a monthly basis by readers.

....and many other things, too numerous to mention....needless to say, every month "inside kung fu" becomes a coaster or something to wedge under a table to level it, and the newest issue of kung fu-tai chi magazine becomes a well-read and appreciated publication that finds its way onto my bookshelf.

thanks for putting out a quality magazine....something that is few and far between these days.

-christopher

[David Jamieson]

seize the opportunity to dust em kfm peeps!

now's your chance!

this is afterall your largest competitor in the niche market of kungfu magazines which include advertising for kungfu products that need pages to be on.

You know the drill, now crush what's left and let out a hearty muwhahahahaha as you do it.

[@PLUGO]

any hints as to how we might "crush them"

aside from sending out the Nacho NinjettesTM that is . . .

[GeneChing]

In answer to your question, I care. I care mostly because a lot of the magazine business is based on market share and distribution, not the quality of the product necessarily. It also marks an interesting shift in the landscape of martial arts magazines. It's my business to know. But I also think it's everyone's business to know who is behind any media source, especially nowadays with media so corporate and slanted. To know who owns any given publication is just good common sense.

For instance, Black Belt is owned by Active Interest Media (http://www.aimmedia.com/). They carry nine magazine titles at this time, their flagship titles being Better Nutrition and Vegetarian Times. The rest are about house construction, for the most part. Active Interest Media acquired BB (along with the other mags) in February 2004 by acquiring Sabot Publishing. Sabot's old website address is now used by Sweet & Low (http://www.sabot.net/). I'm not sure why that is. Anyway, having several magazines adds to marketing power. You can offer special deals to advertisers - more complex campaigns in parallel magazine demographics. Also, it's easier to distribute. Any vendor prefers working with one vendor for multiple products, then several single product vendors.

Aside from IKF and Grappling, CFW Enterprises real flagship magazines are Action Pursuit Games (http://www.actionpursuitgames.com/page.asp?content_id=2330) and Paintball (http://cfw2.com/magazine.asp?content_id=2901). Next time you're at the newsstand, buying your issue of Kung Fu Tai Chi (http://www.martialartsmart.net/19341.html) ;), take a look at Paintball and APG and compare the amount of pages and color, and you'll get a much clearer sense of where the money is. Beckett (http://www.beckett.com) mainly does trading cards, Baseball, Football, Basketball, etc, plus Magic: the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh. This is a huge distribution network, of course. I can see the parallel with Paintball and APG. As for the martial arts overlap, it follows a rather disturbing trend for martial arts driting towards the sci-fi fantasy realm. It's a little geeky, a little too Napoleon Dynamite (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=599) for my tastes. Nevertheless, it's a bigger market than what we've been in previously.

That being said, we would have killed ot get Halle Berry in the studio here. Excuse us, while we find some fresh kung fu hotties (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=619) to get wrapped up in... :cool:

[zuiquan1]

yeah the back cover of your latest issue rose a few questions to my peers as to what I was reading

long story short people dont talk to me much anymore
J/K....or am :p

But I will continue to stay loyal to Wushu Taichi ;) magazine no matter what :cool:

[GeneChing]

Come on, zuiquan1, don't bring up the thong thing (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37867) again. :rolleyes: Wushu Taichi indeed! I thought we straigthened that out already. (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38007) ;) Thanks for your loyalty, all three of you on this thread. It warms the ****les (http://www.martialartsmart.net/88-38k.html) of our hearts. Seriously, thanks guys.

Back OT, I've heard from an unusual number of authors/masters in the IKF stable recently. Not tons of them, just a few. These are people that I have no contact at all with usually, which is why hearing from them is unusual.

[BM2]

I seemed to have missed the thong issue. Counters to the deadly wedgie? ;)

[couch]

I seemed to have missed the thong issue. Counters to the deadly wedgie? ;)

Check out the back page of this month's issue. Then you'll be all caught up!

[David Jamieson]

Has Carradine called you yet G~?

There's a kf disaster looking for a venue! :p

my only ask is "please don't".

good part is that you can now lower the cost on article submission payouts seeing as you are varitably the last of teh superpowers in kungfu magazines.

it's teh corporate thing to do! :D

[David Jamieson]

me can't speel!

[zuiquan1]

Has Carradine called you yet G~?

There's a kf disaster looking for a venue! :p


what :confused:
are you saying you want Davy pictured on the back

PLease I really dont want to see him in a sports bra leaning over some guy with his thong hanging out :eek:

or do I.......No, NO I dont think I do :p

[GeneChing]

or do I.......No, NO I dont think I do That's just wrong, zuiquan1. You need some professional help.


good part is that you can now lower the cost on article submission payouts seeing as you are varitably the last of teh superpowers in kungfu magazines. I'm not sure about that. IKF now has a lot of bank behind it. We're the last kung fu magazine independants. But independance is no longer the way of America, my dear nothern friend. Take all the independent bookstores, gobbled up by the megastores, or the independent cafes crushed by Starbucks. The American observance of Independance Day is becoming more of an oxymoron in a Orwellian sense, sad to say. :(

[David Jamieson]

hegemonic h0mogenization of business for everyone!

ah, how our lives will grow dull in these winds of change. :(

[Banjos_dad]

i'll give this can another kick.

as usual , KL lobs a flash-bang of the correct through the window with:


"...You know the drill, now crush what's left and let out a hearty muwhahahahaha as you do it...."

or perhaps a thunderous extended ki-ai would be more appropriate!

"Has Carradine called you yet G~?

There's a kf disaster looking for a venue! "


aren't we all dying to get the true exclusive inside scoop on Kill Bill 4 though?!?!... ;)

300th postworthy :D

[Banjos_dad]

or how about Keith Vargo?

seeing as its so popular for people to pop up here with threads titled alng the lines of "Why CMA is ineffective for use in the 57R3375"?

he had most of traditional karate foaming at the mouth with that line of sh1t over at Blackbelt for a couple of years lmao.

[GeneChing]

I only met Carridine once and it was years ago, long before I took my watch here (http://www.martialartsmart.net/19341.html).

[golden arhat]

i will stay loyal to this magazine as long as you keep up the standard of the articles and keep making them better
never sell out
never become anything that resembles ikf and never have adverts along the same vein as "do u want to know the secrets top fighters are banging down their doors to get"
or "do u want to attract women effortlessly"
or "i got into the best shape of my life without any work so can you"
the got qi girls are cool
but keep everything tasteful okay no stupid cliches

[GeneChing]

We appreciate your support. But I feel I must be honest with you. I feel that your support comes from our honesty. So I must say that if any of those advertisers that you mentioned approached me, I'd run their ad in a heartbeat. Why? Well, before you can sell out, you must sell. We make money selling ads. That's part of what pays the bills of the magazine. But, because we're under the Tiger Claw (http://www.TigerClaw.com) group, we don't advertise our competitors. Tiger Claw's our retail outlet is www.MartialArtsMart.com (http://www.MartialArtsMart.com) which funds this forum. Now Tiger Claw sells all sorts of gear, so this eliminates most all of the big money advertisers in the martial arts field. That makes it tough to sell outside ads. Tiger Claw does not sell "the secrets top fighters are banging down their doors to get" or "how to attract women effortlessly" or " how to get into the best shape of my life without any work" so we'd happily advertise them. In fact, judging from some of the Russian girls threads and the fact that so many of our members are in 'lonely hearts club,' I think that 'how to attract women effortlessly' ad might do very well in our magazine. It would be so mutually beneficial. We'd get some advertising dollars, they'd get some new clients and more of our forum members might be able to go back to discussing martial arts. Think about that.

You do have my promise to continually strive to improve the quality of our articles. One major advantage of not having so many outside advertisers is that we don't have to cater so much to them. Of course, we support our advertisers - it's a mutual business relationship. We could conceivably run the magazine without any outside advertisers at all. But that would leave little profit for us to make improvements - nothing to grow on - so we advertise others. Many of our advertisers are also our authors who are trying to support their practice through multiple means (writing, offering some product or seminars, promoting events). I've been supporting myself fulltime by the martial arts for about two decades now, and only a fraction of that ever came from teaching. So I know that to survive, one must work a lot of angles. I support the efforts of any professional martial artist as much as I can because it's a difficult economy. Life might be easier as a golf or tennis pro. But apart from that, we can take our research where we please. I confess I write occasional infor (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=527)mercials (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=546), but at least I'm honest about it.

All martial artists must strive to be honest. Always.

[The Xia]

I'm going to toss this idea at you.
How's about a feature where you do a decent-sized biography of a famous Kung Fu master from history? It can be either for the ezine or the actual magazine.

[GeneChing]

Sounds like more work for me! Seriously, I think that's a fine suggestion but it's a little more than I can do right at this moment, and we don't have anyone in our stable of freelance contributors who I'd want to tap for such an assignment. Any columns we run are from trusted freelancers with longstanding records of being able to deliver the goods on time. We'd hate to start something and then leave it hanging.

BTW, speaking of IKF, anyone else notice the page count drop? This last issue (Dec 2006) is 96 pages. They used to be 136 pages. We're still at 114 (and a buck cheaper ;) )