A leading Caribbean publishing company stays the course with its expansion plans as it approaches a major milestone in the face of a global decline in the print publishing industry.
With magazines disappearing, the Trinidad and Tobago-based Toute Bagai Publishing (TBP), along with its founder Neysha Soodeen, is celebrating its 15th year anniversary with its flagship MACO Caribbean Living.
Launched in 1999, the magazine, the epitome of Caribbean lifestyle showcasing architecture, design, art, food and travel, was the first Caribbean-produced publication to be retailed internationally, reaching 58 countries and receiving numerous international design and printing awards.
“In the 1990s, there simply weren’t any publications showcasing Caribbean lifestyle in a manner which international readers would find appealing. I wanted to showcase the sophisticated side of Caribbean living as it seemed the world had an obscure perception of how we in the islands lived, ate and played,” the Trinidad-born publisher recalled.
While the first issue of MACO Caribbean Living is similar to the present magazine 15 years later, the company has stuck to its tried and tested formula of maintaining a professional product.
“The look and feel of the magazine are largely the same. However we have consistently updated and upgraded our paper stock, and design style to keep up with international trends,” she reported.
By 2008, TBP produced a staple of publications, including Destinations Magazine, one of the more successful publications to date being churned out of the publishing house, along with architectural coffee table volumes and children’s books.
Soodeen launched a Caribbean travel portal in 2010, promoting the best of the best Caribbean destinations, and pushing the company into a new but much needed digital space.
It is a credit to Soodeen’s perseverance that TBP has not folded like several other publishing houses across the globe.
“The publishing industry in the region has always been somewhat fickle, with magazines at the top of the pyramid being the most vulnerable,” she said.
“When I launched MACO, Caribbean advertisers were not used to spending that kind of money on one publication. I remember clients telling me that a page in MACO equated to their annual budget for newsprint. It was therefore a learning experience and a successful accomplishment to now have a variety of different magazines attracting advertisers from across many different industries,” she commented.
TBP produces numerous publications across the region for companies such as Sandals Resorts International, the Ministry of Trade, Industry, Investment and Communications in Trinidad and Tobago, and the Caribbean Export Development Agency.
