UK COMPUTER STOLEN FROM MAGAZINE PUBLISHER BEFORE LAUNCH OF NEW MAGAZINE http://www.globalsurfnews.com/news.asp?Id_news=21857

Surfings latest new magazine gets stolen before launching

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 19 May, 2006 : - -

Launching a new magazine is fraught with anxiety at the best of times, but when computers and artwork are stolen 10 days before the first issue, stress levels reach an unprecedented high. Such was the fate of Huck magazine, the latest addition to the burgeoning surf media scene in the UK.

Vince Medeiros, Huck's editor, walked into the magazine's Shoreditch offices a fortnight before a planned May 22 launch to find that "thieves had smashed a window the night before and cleared out the office. I felt shattered - we'd worked so hard and everything was gone." Medeiros, a former editor of America's Surfing magazine and London-based adventure sports bible Adrenalin, had arrived at the offices for a fashion shoot.

Instead, he had to spend the day reporting the theft to the police and his insurers, as well as double-checking that copy could be retrieved: "My first thought was 'have we backed everything up?' Fortunately, pretty much everything was recovered, either because it had been backed up, or because contributors refiled copy and images. But it was a horrible experience."

Huck is now on course for a June 12 launch, when 50,000 copies of the magazine will roll out in English, German, French and Italian. "The European market is very important to us," says Medeiros, "but for issue two 10,000 copies will also be distributed in the US." The appearance of the quarterly magazine illustrates the phenomenal growth of surfing and its close cousins, skateboarding and snowboarding, in the UK.

In the US, the world's largest surfing market, there are just three surfing magazines. Huck enters a crowded domestic marketplace now totalling eight national surfing magazines. Medeiros is convinced that Huck - whose title is an allusion both to its team's love of Huckleberry Finn and to a snowboarding manoeuvre - will be cutting edge enough to carve out a niche.

"We're aiming to appeal to a sophisticated audience of surfers, skateboarders and snowboarders," explains Medeiros. "Our readers will be part of the tribe of surf, skate and snowboard culture, but they will be people who appreciate that there are other things in life." Huck joins established titles Carve, Wavelength, ThreeSixty, Surfgirl, The Surfer's Path and Pit Pilot. As if that is not competition enough, there is another new kid on the block in the form of Slide, a magazine published by veteran British surfing photographer Roger Sharp. Slide's first issue hit the shelves in May, and, says Sharp, has a clear remit: "Slide will have first-class writers and first class photography - an intelligent, thinking surfer's magazine."

As the British Surfing Association estimates that there are 1,000,000 surfers nationwide, the UK's eight surfing magazines may be able to happily share the spoils of a market that shows no sign of stagnating.