Week One is in the books and I have a new found respect for the term “Time Flies”.
When the acquisition completed back in January and Dennis and I were sitting next to Dick and Terry at the MARFC Banquet I thought we had a lot of time to get ready for the launching of the paper.
We had a plan in place, we had good contacts in place and we knew what we had to do and in what order they had to be done.
That all looked good on paper and when I spoke it with conviction it even sounded good. Dennis being the older and more wiser of this team, he said “Are you sure we have enough time”.
I was positive that we could get it done. And so on April 7th we went to press.
We missed our self-imposed deadline of April 1st by a week. That really isn’t that bad considering how ambitious the overall project was. Factor in I have a rather superstitious partner and not printing on April 1st I think made him happy.
The Green “Michigan Racing Scene” banner on the other hand does not have much (read none) support.
Once the paper was printed, then the work really began.
First we had to start preparing for edition two. It took us basically ten weeks to get the first edition done, now we had 7 days to get the second edition completed.
Also, the first edition needed to be distributed. The in-season process will result in Fed-Ex picking up the bundles from our printer and distributing them to the race tracks. However, since the tracks aren’t running yet, we elected to go with a manual distribution.
That means I volunteered to drive them around.
Secondly we ran into a problem with the post office. This wasn’t a post office problem, rather the first edition of the paper was so big that it exceeded the maximum weight limit of our first class postage permit. Sending the papers out first class with the over-size surcharge was an option considered but the cost is prohibitive and left us no option but to send this first edition out 2nd class.
That means it is very possible that you are getting the second edition of the paper and the first edition of the paper in the mail on the same day !
That won’t happen again.
On Saturday we got some face time with actual customers. At the Kalamazoo Test-n-Tune, reader after reader told us how much they enjoyed the paper and how much they had missed the paper in the past.
After a trying ten weeks, it was a boost in the arm to get such positive feedback.
I started getting phone calls from subscribers, customers and our tracks as they received their papers and for the most part the response was very positive.
That is not to say we didn’t have any mistakes in the first issues, we sure did and people were quick to point them out.
THANK YOU !
Feedback from readers will make sure the paper gets better. It also lets us know it is really being read.
This week the racing starts for real. We will have track reporters at the season openers for Crystal Motor Speedway, Mid-Michigan Speedway, Kalamazoo Speedway and Berlin Speedway.
We look forward to seeing you at the track, please say Hi if you see us.
