Art & Antiques' Wick Allison surprises the experts; Allison cracks the Japanese market with "a very gutsy move."

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Jan, 1988 by Jennifer Howland

Art & Antiques' Wick Allison surprises the experts

The latest publisher to tap the expanding ranks of wealthy Japanese professionals is not from a newsweekly or business magazine. Rather, Wick Allison is publisher and editor in chief of Art & Antiques.

Last March Allison decided to launch a Japanese edition of the magazine. Six months later, copies of the issue were in Tokyo.

On top of the speed with which the venture was accomplished, that it happened with no Japanese partner astonishes international experts.

Common knowledge and practice insist that U.S.-Japanese publishing ventures be done with a Japanese partner in order to bridge the gap between the two widely different cultures. However, Allison broke the rules, and apparently successfully.

"People are definitely shocked that the project developed so quickly," Allison acknowledges. The Japanese emphasis on ritual and hierarchy, he points out, usually works against any quick coming to terms on business projects of this sort.

"In the U.S. you rent lists . . . in Japan you develop relationships," Allison says wryly. But in this case, he says, the intense fascination of the Japanese for U.S. and Western art, coupled with Art & Antiques' reputable business history, helped to speed things along, Allison says.

Record-breaking bid

The Japanese love of Western art is, by now, established fact. It was a Japanese insurance company that put up a record-breaking bid of $39 million for a Van Gogh painting of sunflowers last summer. Moreover, Japanese buyers accounted for 40 percent to 50 percent of all auction art sales in this country in 1987, Allison says. This interest in art, combined with the extreme wealth of higher echelon Japanese businessmen, created a logical niche for a Japanese Art & Antiques.

Demographics on the Japanese are hard to come by, but as Lee Hall, president of IntPub and expert on international relations, notes, "These are very wealthy people. In the Forbes ranking of the top 200 wealthiest people in the world, several Japanese businessmen are in the top 10. We're talking billion[aire]s."

Several other factors favor the success of the venture. For one thing, although the stability of international market structures has been rocked by October's stock market plunges, the declining value of the dollar has made foreign investments in the United States more attractive. "Even though the price tag on a piece of art may say $39 million," Allison says, "when you translate that back into Japanese currency, you find you didn't spend that amoutn."

In addition, unfamiliarity with American customs makes Japan ripe for a magazine that aims to make art lovers comfortable with the art buying customs of the United States. The foreign edition, Allison notes, is completely geared toward educating the Japanese about buying art in this country. It contains how-to articles on buying at auctions (a complete mystery to most Japanese, Allison explains), as well as articles on buying from dealers.

A list of dealers is also included. In Japan, Allison notes, it is inconceiable to think of just stopping in at an antiques dealer unknown to you and making a major purchase. "In the U.S., we're a bit more informal," Allison says.

Higher ad rates

The issue was sent via first class mail to 42,000 Japanese businessmen and art dealers--35,000 in Japan and 7,000 in the United States--all nonpaid. Names were culled from a variety of Japanese business and financial publications. The 96-page magazine was edited here, but Allison hired a Japanese art director to handle graphics. It was printed in Japan by Dai Nippon.

Advertising, from 80 U.S. dealers, totaled to 59.5 pages, and at rates considerably higher than the domestic edition: $8,650 for a one-time four-color page, compared with $6,550 for the U.S. version.

Original plans called for another issue of the magazine to come out in the spring, but the stock market debacle has thrown that into question, Allison says. "We have to see how much the Japanese will want to put into the art market now," he says. Other plans are also in the wings: "We're talking about a German edition in '88," Allison discloses.

Although the jury is still out on the Japanese edition's success, there is no doubt the project was an adventure.

"That was a very gutsy move, to do business in Japan without a Japanese partner," Hall says. "The mechanics of business and spirit are so different, there were all kinds of reasons it wouldn't works."