Vapouround magazine Special Issue 02 | Page 60

F E AT U R E LOOK HOW FAR WE’VE COME… ALL THIS IN JUST 12 MONTHS This is our first birthday edition of Vapouround Magazine and to say that we have come a long way in just 12 months is something of a massive understatement. We started the magazine as a direct result of a feature we ran in a local newspaper which we operated in the Derbyshire area at the time. What was to simply be a relatively small feature on vaping turned out to be a special pull-out supplement for Vaper Expo UK 2015 at Birmingham’s NEC. The supplement was given to everyone who attended the Vaper Expo and it went down so well with the advertisers, show organisers and the general public that we simply knew we could not leave it at that. We immediately saw the need for a lifestyle magazine for the vaping industry and from this Vapouround Magazine was born. We worked tirelessly over the next six weeks to take the magazine from just an idea to a physical product and everyone put their heart and soul into doing so. Our aim was to launch the magazine at the upcoming Vapefest UK in Shrewsbury so the clock was ticking and we had to work fast if we were to meet the deadline. Towards the end we were putting in quite a fe w late night sessions but everything went to plan and everyone who attended Vapefest UK received a copy of our first 58 VAPOUROUND MAGAZINE USA magazine. Vapouround Magazine was no longer an idea, it was now real and the initial feedback was positive. In fact people kept coming up to us to tell us how much they liked the magazine and many wanted to take home extra copies for family members and friends. That was such a great feeling because it meant that all our hard work had paid off. By this time Vapefest Ireland was only a few weeks away so we met up with the organisers in Dublin. That meeting went well and we were asked to be the official media partners for the event. We launched Issue Two at Vapefest Ireland and once again everyone at the show received a free copy and the feedback was even more positive this time - people really liked what we were doing and encouraged us to keep on growing. Initially we had planned on a quarterly magazine (ie four issues a year) but we quickly moved to producing six issues a year simply to cope with the demand from advertisers who wanted to be featured on our pages. Our vision has always been to make our magazine very different to other vaping magazines. We wanted it to stand out and we wanted it to be a true lifestyle magazine offering the best stories from the vaping community. We decided that the only way to really do this was through seeing it first-hand. We asked ourselves if we weren’t at the biggest events, how could we report on it? If we didn’t engage with vapers across the world, how would we tell their story, so our journey truly began. Since then we have been attending vaping events around the globe and we have had a wonderful reception from the international vaping community on all of our travels near and far. Soon the Vapouround crew were regular features at shows and vaping events throughout the USA, Europe and Asia. To date we must have been to around 40 events globally and it is by putting in that amount of effort and hard work to engage with the international vaping community that has allowed us to grow the way we have done. We have now developed great contacts within the industry and formed business relationships with some of the biggest companies in vaping and we continue to do this as we grow our business and take it to the next level. We are proud to be part of the vaping