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Jackie Nwobu quit her pharmaceutical job to give brides of color a platform where they could find both inspiration and resources for their upcoming nuptials.
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| Jackie Nwobu |
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"I
want readers to open our magazine and to be inspired," she says. "I
want them to be able to think outside of the box. I want them to see
themselves," the editor-in-chief adds.
Below are five tips extracted from her experience of launching a bridal magazine.
Don't let a recession scare you
Nwobu started MunaLuchi amid the global recession, when sales of most print magazines and newspapers were falling.
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"People
were telling us 'you're crazy! Print is dying,'" she says. "But print
is not dying. I would say it's evolving if anything, but you also have
to know how to evolve and be on social media," she adds.
In addition the print magazine, MunaLuchi is also a a glossy blog. Nwobu's
commitment to the magazine's digital presence has paid off: the website
clocks 500,000 page views each month and boasts over half a million
followers across its social media platforms.
Spot the opportunity
The
Philadelphia-based entrepreneur was a guest at many famously lavish
Nigerian weddings, but she noticed that the kind of nuptials she
attended weren't represented in mainstream bridal publications.
"The
market was very one-sided, honestly. There was very little diversity,"
she says. "If you picked up a bridal magazine you probably would not see
any bride of color in there. You might see her in an ad as a bridesmaid
or something like that, but you wouldn't see her wedding represented."
This
lack of visibility gave Nwobu and her husband, who is her business
partner, the push to carve a corner out of the wedding industry for
multicultural brides.
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| Jackie |
Get a distributor
Nwobu
printed 10,000 copies of her first issue without a clear business
strategy of how she was going to sell them. She stored them in her
garage while trying to find outlets that would carry MunaLuchi.
"That
was a huge mistake," she says. "You are supposed to get distribution
and then they place orders and then you know how many copies you have to
print, so we did it backwards," she adds.
Luckily, Nwobu and her husband managed to find a distributor and MunaLuchi now prints 50,0000 copies per issue.
Don't limit yourself
Even though she is Nigerian American, Nwobu's magazine doesn't only focus on brides of her own heritage.
"It's
not just Nigerian weddings it's not just African-American weddings,"
she says. "There are so many different aspects that make up the black
woman, and then you've got the Asian weddings too. We are really a
multicultural magazine," Nwobu says.
Study the market
The editor credits her success to her analytical approach, which she notes helped override her lack of publishing experience.
"I
mean, we've made lots of mistakes, of course, because we didn't' know
anything about publishing," she says, "but in the process we've learned
so much about our market that we know our readers inside out. That's why
we've been able to give them exactly what they need: because we analyze
and we understand what they're looking for," Nwobu adds.
Source: CNN
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