Designing both the business and publication of Monthly Puroresu ground-up has been both a joy and an insane learning lesson. BUT! Burning all that midnight oil and obsessing over editorial direction and design while developing a unique brand of storytelling has started to pay serious dividends… so it’s worth looking at how this all started.
Last year R/GA laid off 10% of their workforce (including me) at the height of the pandemic, and having co-authored my final pitch deck for them I said adios! and took an overflow creative energy with me. But I was streaming content at home, refreshing the news just like everybody else when everything clicked.
(I just happen to stream a lot of Japanese wrestling)
Somehow, my Puro Reporter Twitter had grown in audience substantially – clearly the content was resonating with a curious fan base and like-minded readers. So I rounded up a band of writers and found two trustworthy artists to make this vision come to life. Now, we’re preordering nearly 100 copies every quarter with a special edition on the way. The reception has blown me away.
The quality and quantity of the latest issue both increased dramatically, and I’m super proud of the end result.
This time we really brought our “A” Game as a team, while I handled editorial direction, page designs, social content strategy and e-commerce while juggling the project scheduling.
In addition to having greater breadth of content, I landed new ad partnerships and discovered Indie Printing would allow us to scale up production while reducing print times by nearly two-thirds!
I developed about a half-dozen important industry contacts while working with legendary TV manager and modern-day talent scout Sonny Onoo, who has helped guide us through Tokyo Joshi Pro-Wrestling coverage. Onoo worked with me directly behind the scenes on how the American market can better be served when it comes to translating the Japanese pro wrestling business and action.
Each new issue a new learning opportunity presents itself, which has been awesome for the most part! Our high standards can cause headaches while working outside the confines of the team’s 9-5’s, but overall we’re very proud of how everything turned out.
