What a time we are living through in Southern Georgian Bay! Everyone in our quite vast readership has been affected by COVID-19. As I write this, public spaces and businesses are starting to open up, but we’re still living in an unreal world.
Our local businesses have been hurt by the shutdown and we’re only now seeing a dim light at the end of the tunnel for stores and services. Consequently, I wanted to update our readers on the status of On The Bay and our plans for the year ahead.
Our Spring issue, which was written and designed in March, was ready to go to the printer just as the government was beginning to mandate shutdowns. As we anxiously waited to see if the printing industry was included, our fear was that our beautiful Spring issue would never see the light of day. At the last moment, printing was deemed an essential service and thankfully for our readers and advertisers, the largest issue in our history went lickety-split to press.
At the last moment, printing was deemed an essential service and thankfully for our readers and advertisers, our Spring issue, the largest in our history, went lickety-split to press.
Once we had the issue in our hands, we knew that many of the retail locations that distributed our magazine would be shut down at the time we were ready to distribute. Essential businesses such as food and drug stores were not closed down, so we increased the quantity in those locations and the magazine literally flew off the racks as our Distribution Coordinator, Peter Gibson, stocked up those locations as often as twice a week.
With these efforts combined with some new postal delivery to outlying areas of our region, as well as our private distribution to homes in central Collingwood, we were “sold out” by the end of June. Consequently, by the time you read this in our special Summer issue, full distribution of the Spring issue will be complete.
Now that more businesses have been allowed to open, including golf clubs, marinas and most retail stores, our readers have a wider choice of locations to pick up the Summer issue. When our next issue is distributed in early October, we expect that On The Bay will be available at all of our previous pickup locations.
Throughout the last four months, our parent company, ZoomerMedia, and our CEO, Moses Znaimer, never for a minute questioned our plans to publish our Summer issue, despite the fact that a number of advertisers could not be with us.
I am proud to say that our parent company remained whole, with no layoffs whatsoever. The top earners and non-frontline workers were asked to work a four-day week for a number of months, which we all did willingly.
When I first talked to Moses about our challenges in April, his short and confidence-building answer was, “Do your best,” and that’s exactly what we did.
Many thanks to our loyal advertisers and our 50,000 readers for their ongoing support of On The Bay. Thanks also to our exceptional staff: Editor Janet Lees; Art Director Holger Meiche; Operations Manager Cindy Caines; Sales Manager Susan Holden; Distribution Coordinator Peter Gibson; Proofreader Anita Hunter; and Media Advisors Shauna Burke, Rick Gordon and Julie Brillinger.
We simply could not publish such a fine magazine without this committed and talented team. ❧
