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B East

B east

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Xpublishing

Fashion / Culture / Attitude

B East Magazine is the vibrant New Europe's provocative lifestyle and fashion glossy.

Tallinn, Estonia

Pikk 50, #3, 10133

Email: info@beastnation.com

Category: Culture, Fashion, Lifestyle
Periodicity: Quarterly
Language: English
Format: 240 x 310 mm
Circulation: 30,000
Price: 150 CZK
Web: http://www.beastnation.com

Founded in 2005

B East Magazine is the vibrant New Europe’s provocative lifestyle and fashion glossy. It seeks to capture the energy of the enlarged Europe through edgy fashion spreads, contrarian features that challenge received wisdom, and photo and travel editorials that give real insight into this region and beyond. It is our belief that the Old Europe has lost its energy since the collapse of Communism and is no longer the source of inspiration it once was. Its nightlife is moribund and tired; its social fabric strained by racial and sexual tension; and its art and commerce not so cutting-edge as in the past. B East Magazine will celebrate the e¬xciting zeitgeist of the New Europe while also using its pages as a forum to de-mystify and de-hype the West.

B East is an English-language magazine published quarterly from offices in both Prague and Warsaw. It is distributed all across Europe, including most of Eastern Europe Germany, Holland and the UK. Each issue usually revolves around a theme reflecting the current zeitgeist: ‘Fall of Fun in the West’ for the first issue, and Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’ for the second. The third issue will focus on ‘Little Beasts’ across the region and the Issue #4 will be on Poland.

Exclusive Interview

B. East

What is your magazine about?
B.EAST Magazine is a provocative fashion/attitude glossy about the New Europe and the idea of the ‘East’. It celebrates the vibrancy and underhyped creativity and nightlife of the region, while also critiquing the other side of the world with our motto, ‘Eat the West’.

Who’s behind the project? Tell us about the founders, their backgrounds and their motivations!
I’m the founder and creative director. The magazine, ironically, first grew claws in the West, during a year spent in Amsterdam, after almost a decade in Eastern Europe. The growing conservatism of the ‘once wacky’ city, made me appreciate the high-octane dynamism of Warsaw, Budapest & Moscow. As a former editor-in-chief of Russian Playboy, with experience in Prague, the Baltics, and elsewhere, it was a short step from there to launching the magazine. Prague-based Martin Svoboda has been instrumental in giving the magazine its edgy, bleepy, design aesthetic. Estonian-Australian Joel Alas is based in Berlin and manages to pull much of the content together from far-flung freelancers, while throwing wicked parties.

How do you produce one issue? How much time do you spend on it? How big is your team?
We’re a highly motivated troika, dispered across the region. Our managing editor is based in Berlin, designer in Prague, while I travel between Kiev, Riga and London. It takes around four months to put an issue together, with much of the content coming from our global team of freelancer photographers and writers.

What have been the important steps in the life of your magazine?
The biggest step was bringing out the first issue, which was quite a challenge given our resources at the time. Setting up a solid international distribution was the other main challenge, and so was creating a buzz in various cities across the region from Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, Riga to Bucharest and Berlin. Since then, we have lived out our motto of ‘Eating the West’ through partnerships with key international events like Bread&Butter, London Fashion Week, Sonar, Miami Winter Music Conference and others. With our 11th ‘East Sides are Sexy’ launched last fall, and a dedicated website HYPERLINK "http://www.beastnation.com" www.beastnation.com, gaining traffic, the magazine is set to remain a trendsetter into its 5th year in 2009 and beyond.

Which are the key incredients for the success of your magazine?
With magazine sales declining in these credit-crunch times, it’s critical to broaden B.East’s message through digital projects, parties, art shows and anthologies, thus turning it more into a platform about the energy of the East. Also, with so many East Europeans having moved to the West, increasing circulation in the UK next year is a big priority.

What are the difficulties you are confronted with? What would be “the” thing to help the magazine to improve?
Being a pan-regional magazine is tough since advertising budgets are mostly allocated country-by-country. To survive in these difficult times, B.East would have to become a strong player in a big country. Strangely enough, that might have to be London, which is turning into the capital of ‘East Europe’. Also, given that our team is so spread out, meeting in one place to brainstorm and close the issue is always a challenge.

Where do you want the magazine to be in five years?
We’d like to move away from an East European focus, and emphasize the Be East aspect more, with a broader agenda encompassing East London, Asia, and the rise of the East in general.

Tell us about your audience! Who are the readers of your magazine?
A majority of our readers are savvy Eastern Europeans who have traveled in the West and would like to prick its overhyped bubble. We also have a growing fan base elsewhere, whether it’s Poles and Russians based in London, or various hipsters in both Asia and Europe who dig our ‘East Beats West’ message.

Is remaining independent important to you? Is it part of the strategy?
It has been very important in the early years. During these tough times, we are not against bringing in a big publisher to help refocus the magazine and attract more advertisers.

What’s your relationship with advertisement? Does it influence your content? Do you care about advertising-driven-editorials?
Since we’re quite provocative, it has been difficult working with more mainstream advertisers. It takes courage to advertise in a magazine that some see as sexist & overly opinionated. Since the furor over our extreme cover for the Red issue that featured a clown with skin disease lying in a trashy Russian flat eating MacDonalds, we have toned down the editorial somewhat. We are open to advertiser-driven editorials, as long as they don’t detract from our particular ‘Beast’ style.

Do you think that magazine readers still need to watch TV?
Sure, why not. When we’re not out being Beasts, we can be couch potatoes watching cheesy CSI Miami episodes on Sunday nights.

Which is your relationship with your printer? Does he play a main role in your development?
No, he doesn’t. We are looking for a printer that would play a more important role in our development.

Which magazines did influence you most? What are you looking for in other magazines?
Vice, WAD, i-D, Ptyuch (Russia) & Esquire (Russia). We look for magazines that have a worldview that is unique and strong, but unfortunately that is increasingly hard to find.

What do you think of your issue 01, when you look back at it?
I absolutely love it. So much passion and energy went into the issue, and it was so naïve in a way, since we had no idea how readers and advertisers would respond.

What question did you never ask in your magazine but would have liked to?
We have an open attitude and pretty much publish everything that we would like to, sometimes much to our detriment.

How many magazines do you buy / get / read each month? Do you qualify yourself a maniac?
It depends. Sometimes I might just pick up a few local magazines while traveling deep in the East, like Ukraine or Belarus. Otherwise, always on the lookout for our favorites: Romania’s Omagiu, Lithuania’s Pravda, Kasino, Fantastic Man, WAD, Metal, Pig & Tank.

Colophon 2009.