Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 27, 1994 TAG: 9409290015
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MELISSA DeVAUGHN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Kelly Page Clark smiles sheepishly when she recalls those late night brainstorming sessions and door-to-door advertising campaigns when she and her colleagues shaped the first-ever arts magazine in the New River Valley.
"None of us really knew it would work; we just hoped it would work," Clark, now 25, said of the fall of 1991 when she and another college graduate worked to get the magazine off the ground. "I was so excited, and I was straight out of college, I really didn't know what I was doing."
She must have been doing something right, because ArtBeat Magazine is still here. Call it serendipity, but the magazine, which carries articles and listings of artists and art shows in the New River Valley and beyond, has outlasted new publishers, various locations and an ever-changing format. And Clark, who has stuck by the magazine through thick and thin, is learning first-hand how to be a successful young professional in a competitive market.
It started four years ago, when Clark, then Kelly Page, a public-relations graduate from Virginia Tech, landed a job at a marketing and advertising firm in Blacksburg. Her job was to sell the company, to bring in as many new accounts as possible.
Shortly after she was hired, though, her boss, Joseph Sirgy, took on a joint project with the New River Valley Arts Council to come up with an attractive, free magazine that would represent the talents of area artists. For years, towns such as Pulaski in Pulaski County and Narrows in Giles County have been proclaiming themselves the center of the arts for the New River Valley. Arts Council representatives felt a collaborative effort would be more effective, gaining more recognition for the area as a whole.
Clark and her colleagues spent months planning the project.
"We determined in the beginning that because it's a quarterly magazine it needed to be nice enough to keep around for a long time - it needed to look good," Clark said. "We wanted it to portray the quality and class of the artistic talent we have, so we went all out. We really overdid it."
The first magazine was a hit. After five months of selling ads, designing pages and coming up with a name for the magazine - "I didn't like ArtBeat at first; it sounded too much like `Heartbeat of America and that Chevrolet commercial,'" Clark said - the first publication hit the presses in January 1992.
It had a black-and-white glossy cover and was filled with listings of art and craft shows in the New River Valley. Clark, another employee and a college student wrote the feature stories - "We decided at the last minute to add those," she said. The 10,000 copies of the magazine disappeared quickly.
With the momentum rolling and Clark already looking ahead toward the next publication, she was hit with her first bombshell as a young professional. The small company she was working for was closing - bankrupt after 12 years of operation.
"I had gotten completely involved, and [ArtBeat] had become my baby," Clark said. "I had done a lot of the legwork, and I didn't want to see it fold."
As a way to keep the magazine alive, Clark made an offer to her former employer: Trade the rights of the magazine for wages he still owed to her. Sirgy said yes, and from that moment on, Clark began running Page One Media Services from her apartment.
"Everything was such a learning experience for me back then," Clark said. "I got my business license and took out a small loan for a computer. I had no idea I would be starting my own company, being so young, but everything just sort of happened."
Clark said her naivete in the business world was apparent, but many people were willing to help her succeed.
"At the bank, they took my business plan and showed me how to fill out all the contracts, but they didn't expect any less from me than any other businessperson," she said. "That belief in me made me want to perform even better."
In the two and a half years since Clark has built her business and perfected the magazine, her personal life has changed, too.
She met her husband-to-be, Mark Clark, while she was in college, after running out of gas in front of his house. He helped her that evening, and, not too long afterward, the two were dating. Somewhere in the midst of creating the business, Clark managed to find time for a wedding - in May 1992.
"Mark has been a great supporter," Clark said, smiling at the thought of their hectic life back then. "In fact, this has always been a family endeavor. My sister helps write some of the articles, Mark helps me distribute copies to area businesses ...and my dad is my No.1 supporter. He's constantly got the magazine and gives them out to people."
Clark rolls her eyes in disbelief when asked about owning her own business at 25.
"Everything just sort of fell into place," she said. "I know my professors at Tech wouldn't believe it if they saw me now."
Clark described herself as a "good to average" student at Cave Spring High School, where she graduated in 1987. She liked to hang out with her friends and was involved in the school's drama club.
"I never doubted, though, that I'd be going to college, and Cave Spring prepared me well," she said.
Once at college, Clark said, she was a less-than-average student, more concerned with the social aspects of college life.
"Looking back, I feel bad, because I could have done so much better at Tech," she said. "I felt guilty walking up to get my diploma - I thought, 'Is this really happening?' I could have gotten so much more out of school. I was a C student, but I could have been an A student."
Clark prints 10,000 copies of each issue of the magazine, 2,000 of which go to the New River Arts Council, which helps promote the magazine by mailing copies to arts organizations state- and nationwide. Other than that, she is on her own, sub-contracting artwork, finding free-lance writers, selling ads, publishing the magazine and distributing the remaining magazines to businesses in the New River Valley and the surrounding area.
"There's this grueling deadline pressure for about a week, but it's like, 'wow!' when you see it. It's justification for all that work," she said.
As serendipitous as the success of ArtBeat magazine has been, Clark realizes that she can't run on luck for the rest of her life, and she has begun to question the future of the magazine.
"I think it helped me in the beginning to be so naive about things, because I wasn't trying to satisfy anyone except myself," Clark said. "But now I realize that running a business requires money, and ArtBeat - even though it's popular - is just not making any. My heart is in publishing, but the money is in advertising."
To turn her nonprofit effort into a real money-making, in-demand product, Clark is considering some changes. ArtBeat may expand to cover more than just the arts.
"We've always taken a broad approach to what we call art," Clark said, referring to recent articles on fly-tying and a spotlight on Pulaski's efforts to restore an historic theatre there. "But I would rather do that; I would rather cover more things in the New River Valley" than expand coverage to Roanoke.
"This has been a huge learning experience for me," Clark said, "but now I'm ready for more. I'm ready for some stability, and with that I'll probably have to make some changes."
Free copies of ArtBeat magazine can be found at Mill Mountain Theatre, Centre in the Square, Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea, New Mountain Mercantile and other businesses in the Roanoke Valley.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB