GearTrends is (gasp) almost 1 year old!

July 7, 2003

On Aug. 1, GearTrends® Network — including SNEWS, www.GearTrends.com, and our GearTrends magazines — will be 1 year old, and to celebrate, we thought we’d share a few milestones with you. 

SNEWS (Specialty NEWS)

In the last year, SNEWS has brought our nearly 5,000 readers, more than 1,040 pages of advertising-free news in our weekly SNEWS News Digest — that’s more than 500 pages of news each for the Outdoor and Fitness markets. Considering that we don’t add reviews, Business Nerve Center stories, special reports, and other special features to the News Digests, our team has brought you well over 1,300 pages of news and information in the last year.

GearTrends Outdoor and Fitness Magazines

We published our first magazine, “GearTrends, Winter Outdoor” to rave reviews in January — more than 12,000 magazines were distributed by direct mail, and at SIA, Outdoor Retailer, EORA, ispo in Germany and other regional shows. Several industry veterans even went so far as to say it was the best outdoor trade publication they’d ever seen. Our first GearTrends Fitness magazine ships from the printer in late July, with a planned circulation of 8,000 going to retailers and shows, and our GearTrends Summer Outdoor magazine with a planned circ of 12,000 hitting retail doors and shows the first week of August. All told, by Aug. 1, our team will have brought you 250 magazine pages supported by over 107 pages of advertising. Though math is not our strong suit, our calculations tell us that means 143 pages of editorial, therefore fulfilling our commitment to you that editorial pages will always exceed those of advertising.

Because many of you asked for it, you will soon be able to read past GearTrends magazines online — fully designed and complete with advertising on GearTrends.com that offers links directly back to the advertisers’ pages. Look for our Winter Outdoor magazine to be available online by Aug. 1.

The Growing GearTrends Network

As of July 7, there are more than 80 companies participating in the GearTrends Network as members, receiving the benefits of Web coverage at GearTrends.com, advertising exposure in our GearTrends magazines, and SNEWS subscriptions. Look to GearTrends.com too where you’ll find nearly 200 retailers in our consumer-searchable retailer directory.

We thank each of you for your faith in our vision, efforts and team.

Education and information websites Adventure Network® and Total Fitness Network — recently brought in as part of the GearTrends Network — have been completely redesigned to make navigation easier and to blend the look and feel into a more consistent format. Both sites enjoy a combined 30,000 unique visits per month from consumers, and will be updated and expanded in the next few months to add articles and checklists that will more fully support the product and company information on the GearTrends site. Both sites have prominent links from GearTrends.com and provide key links back to GearTrends.com from the sites.

While its official debut will be outside our 1-year anniversary, we’d be remiss if we overlooked our partnership with the Outdoor Industry Association to produce the association’s first Membership Directory, slated for distribution in early December.

Creating Community Through Communication

None of the above would be possible without a great team. For our eyes and ears all over the world that feed us news and information tips daily, we thank you and promise we won’t name you.

Our regular team of editors — five in outdoor and two in fitness — represent over 100 years of history covering and participating in the outdoor industry and over 40 years of covering and participating in the fitness industry. And that doesn’t even count our bank of experienced and talented free-lance contributors. Not one of our team watches from the sidelines. We’re involved in the industries we write about fully. We’re also very proud of our commitment to give back to the community through donations of money and time. This summer, for example, four of our editors are either guiding or assisting as volunteer leaders on four separate weeklong Big City Mountaineers backpack outings for inner-city kids.

We’re excited about the year ahead — not just for the new challenges we’ll embrace, but also for the opportunities you, our readers, give us every day to prove that we are indeed living our mantra of “Creating Community Through Communication.”