Behind the scenes at Bead&Button

Posted Sat, Dec 13 2008 7:00 AM by Ann Dee Allen

It’s gratifying to know that more than 100,000 people choose Bead&Button products every month, when there are so many options available. Your loyalty is very much appreciated. Because you make an investment in Bead&Button each time you buy it, we’d like to tell you a little about who helps us produce the magazine, our special issues, and BeadAndButton.com, in addition to the editors.

Of course, publishing an international magazine is a large-group effort. Lots of planning goes on during the year, from budgeting to creating content, to design and production, to printing and distribution. There are many people involved and lots of information to consider. In addition to our internal Kalmbach Publishing editorial, art, photo, customer service, advertising, information systems, internet, circulation, accounting, administration, trade sales, order processing, mailing and distribution, marketing, PR, and HR colleagues ..... we also work with our many external customers  — printers, postal experts, distributors, shops, stores, advertisers, contributors, and others — to serve you. It’s an integrated web involving scores of people.

The Bead&Button editorial team shapes our print and online content — the subject matter that you read and use — and provides direct services related to our readers and contributors. We also tap into feedback from surveys, polls, and e-mails. We constantly review our successes, your feedback, and new proposals in order to serve you the best way that we can. We work closely with our art department designers, illustrators, and photographers.

Our customer service department helps customers with their needs and wants. Trade sales staff work with shops. Our circulation department leads our strategic direction with regard to distribution and subscriptions. Events marketing staff put on the world's best bead show. Naturally, our advertising department serves our advertisers. And, we have a books department which produces our company's books. Each of these departments is separate.

I hope this short summary helps give you an understanding of the magazine beyond what you’ve learned as a reader and Web site visitor. I encourage you to take our online surveys and polls as often as possible. We always have a survey of our current magazine issue, an online poll, and an e-newsletter survey available.

Here’s some survey news: We have redesigned the questions for our current-issue survey, beginning with the February 2009 issue of the magazine. Our main-page Web site poll changes weekly, and our e-newsletter survey changes every month. We also report on survey results in the e-newsletter and other places.

Please don’t hesitate to send us your comments.
 

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