Always Ready For A New Business
Haresh Shah
Must have been early 1990 when landed on my desk is an impressive corporate brochure of Autraco Holdings based in Vienna, Austria. In the cover letter signed by its CEO Rolf Dolina, he expresses his desire to want to publish Playboy magazine in Czechoslovakia. But we are already in negotiations with Vladimír Tichý of the Gennex Corporation, the publishers of magazines, books, films and video that included the Czech language edition of ComputerWorld. That in itself wouldn’t have stopped me from entertaining another option, especially because the Autraco Holdings boasts of its wide reach in the former eastern European countries that include Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. The countries where they are sole distributors of Memorex USA, Honda automobiles and Fuji films. Enclosed with the letter are some issues of the Czech language version of Germany’s Burda Moden, widely distributed and hugely popular women’s magazine – similar to the Simplicity patterns in the United States. The magazine he was publishing with Hana Wagenhofer – his Prague based business partner in several joint ventures. And it is mainly for Hanna that he is so keen on doing Playboy. It would give her a stronger presence on the Czech publishing scene.
From the look of it, the corporation seems to be financially healthy and thriving, with dozens of entities spread over ten European nations. Looks more like a department store of consumer products, up until then deprived to the communist block. Also included in their portfolio are Palmer’s and Elizabeth Arden fashion and beauty products. A far cry from really creating a high quality magazine. But I realize that for any successful entrepreneur like Rolf Dolina, everything is a “product”, as it is for our group President William Stokkan. I remember when International Publishing was absorbed by Bill’s Licensing and Merchandizing division, me often chiding him that magazines don’t have customers, they have readers. He would smirk and say, whatever! And yet, smart enough to know the difference.
For the businessmen aspiring to be publishers, the thinking must go; They can find some good translators, sign up with a printing company and distributors and voila! Other details are just logistics. That is, until they meet me do they realize that you can’t make a successful local edition of any magazine just by translating the content. Unlike other products, it doesn’t come pre-produced. That they really need to create it issue by an issue of their own, month after month, for which they need an entire editorial staff, advertising and distribution arms.
Ditto, the small independent publishers. Even though they do have some idea of what sort of infra-structure making of a magazine takes. And still they think soon as they put Playboy logo on the cover, it should fly off the newsstands like the pigeons off Piazza San Marcos in Venice. Suddenly it would become their flagship and above all they would be known as the publishers of the local edition of Playboy – Hugh M. Hefner reincarnate of their countries.
Up until the opening up of the previously closed markets of the eastern Europe, Playboy had signed up with the major local publishers, some even larger corporations than PEI in Chicago. Once the agreement was signed, they would have a team devoted exclusively to Playboy, and one more title would be absorbed into their wider network of other publications. Not so with the emerging markets such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland – the first of the three viable eastern European markets. There are no established publishers for us to hook up with. There is no tradition of free journalism. The people with some professional knowledge of the media had emerged from the state’s propaganda machinery who worked within the stringent constraints of communism. The field is wide open to anyone who wants to explore. Suddenly there are small time hustlers with BIG ideas. Some of them, serious contenders, others without a clue.
And then there are the Western entrepreneurs – the expats returning home and some like Rolf Dolina, well established businessmen across the driving distances of the Eastern borders. Rolf is already doing business in several of those countries and is the go getter – the kind who grabs an opportunity when he sees one. And he knows how to make and cultivate contacts. He is a quick study and learns ropes incredibly fast. Never mind the product. In India, they would call him sub bunder ka vepari – the trader of every port. He is smart, shrewd and calculating, not to mention, charming. Making money is his passion and of many business cards he carries, the one of them is an illustration of the rooster just having settled his hen in the process of laying eggs, turning around and chasing another chick before she gets away. The tag line at the bottom says: always ready for a new business.
You can’t help but respect their daring and tenacity. Even so, the first thing I do is to try to dissuade them, because as Jorge Fontevecchia of Editorial Perfil in Argentina once put it: only to your enemies do you suggest publishing as a business. Another argument I make is that asking for Playboy’s hand is like wanting to marry a rich man’s totally spoiled daughter and it takes more than money to keep her in the style she is used and aspires to. I have gotten some laughs out of it, but you can’t dissuade someone who has hopelessly fallen in love with the idea.
In such cases I try my best to avoid meeting face-to-face with such prospects. What if I end up liking him or her? But when he sets his heart on something, Rolf is not that easily dissuaded and he is not the kind to give up that easily. After some months of fax correspondence Rolf seems to have understood that doing a serious magazine was a different ball game altogether. Not too long after, he calls my office in Chicago and casually mentions that he is in Florida, and wouldn’t mind flying to Chicago and talk with me personally. During his visit, we have a pleasant Indian lunch at my favorite of the time, Bombay Palace. Even though I had forgotten all about it, Rolf still fondly remembers that meal.
A month earlier, I had hosted the Czech team in Chicago and over that beautiful fall week sat down with them at my home around the dining table and taken them through the nuts and bolts of making of Playboy magazine – with as Ivan (Chocholouš) still remembers, Beethoven’s Symphony #9 playing in the background. Ivan couldn’t help but ask: whether there was any significance behind me playing that particular music? Not really. But it gave me an idea to use it as an example for what I was just then trying to communicate. I was taking them through the making of Playboy, page by page, and one of the things I always want to hammer into the minds of a new team is the concept of pacing.
To make it simple, you don’t place a cartoon behind a cartoon, non-fiction doesn’t follow another non-fiction, ditto the pictorials. You can’t have every illustration as a two page spread or a single page opening. The magazine, like a symphony has to have a certain rhythm which segues from one note to another. The fan of classical music, Ivan immediately understood it, something he still brings up in conversations. At the end of our weeklong orientation and the brain storming, we had agreed on the next steps. For them to go home and begin to put together the first few issues. I would take several trips to Prague and work with them and we would shoot for the early 1991 launch.
●●●
Well before the Berlin Wall crumbled on November 9, 1989, Hungary was already wiggling out of the tight ropes of the Soviet Union. Popping up were many young entrepreneurs and starting up private businesses. Among them, Dezsö Futász, the suave and dynamic publisher of the Hungarian edition of Scientific America and ComputerWorld.
Approached me on his behalf were the Hungarian expats and venture capitalists, John and Eva Breyer of Invent Corporation, based in Hillsborough, California. The breathtaking story of their escape across the border into Austria and on to the United States during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in itself would make for an incredible and thrilling love story. But for the time being, I would stick to the story of Playboy’s arrival in the eastern Europe.
After the initial exchange of information, my boss Bill and I met in my office with Eva and Dezsö in the early spring of 1989. Over the next several months we work on the details of launching of Playboy’s first edition behind the Iron Curtain. As we had just began to put together the pages of the first issue of the Hungarian edition, I remember how our entire team had put everything away and rushed over to the Kossuth Lajos tér to join the jubilant crowd gathered outside Hungary’s Parliament Building to witness the historic moment of Matyas Szuros, Hungary`s acting president declaring Hungary to be an independent nation.
It was Monday, October 23, 1989. Sixteen days ahead of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The exuberant crowd and the joy that rippled through us took me back forty two years to the night of August 15, 1947 to Bori Bunder in Bombay, and to the jubilant crowds celebrating India’s independence from the British. I still can feel the exhilaration and the thrill of that night. Seven years old, perched on the shoulders of an adult, I was surrounded by an euphoria with beating of the drums, screams of joy, chanting – the fireworks lighting up the sky and the Indo-Gothic façade of the Victoria Terminus lit up like a bride was something I still cherish like a distant dream that’s still well and alive in my memory. The Hungarian edition of Playboy launches on November 28, 1989, nineteen days after the people began to carry bits and pieces of the Berlin wall home as souvenirs.
It’s almost a year later that I am sitting with Rolf Dolina in Chicago’s Bombay Palace restaurant. It is clear to me that he is smitten with the idea of publishing a Playboy in the eastern Europe, where his businesses reign supreme. I tell Rolf about how far along we already were with the Czech edition. Nothing I could do.
But I am thinking, perhaps he can team up with Dezsö in Hungary. A whole year in publishing Playboy there, the economy and the weaning optimism of the country is setting in and the magazine is not doing as well as anticipated. Though it has already established itself as the class in itself against which others are measured. They are struggling. What the magazine needs is some infusion of cash and someone like Rolf’s expertise and the business acumen.
Over the next month or so I speak with Dezsö, Eva and Rolf, resulting in Dezsö, his partner Andras Toro, Rolf and I meeting in Budapest. Rolf is willing to land helping hand in Hungary, but his heart is still set on Czechoslovakia. Dezsö is connected with Vladimír Tichý in Prague through their common thread of ComputerWorld. The next day, Dezsö and I drive to Prague and meet with Vladimír and his right hand man Ivan Chocholouš. A day later, Rolf drives in from Vienna and the three of them reach an accord. Rolf gets to help Dezsö as well as gets to participate in Czechoslovakia. Eventually he would buy out Vladimír. Mission accomplished!
When we launch the Czechoslovakian edition on April 25, 1991, I am on the stage of Lucerna Palace with Playmate Christy Thom (February 1991) by my side, announcing the arrival of the Czech Playboy. Standing on the side are: the publisher Vladimír Tichý and the co-publisher Hana Wagenhofer, while Rolf is hobnobbing in the crowd, feeling like a million dollars, smug and with a big smile on his face. Like the German Playmate Barbara Corser (July 1975) once said to me: Haresh, if you want something bad enough, you somehow manage to get it.
© Haresh Shah 2014
Illustration: Celia Rose Marks
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