New Owner to Dress Up L.A. Trade Magazine

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California Apparel News has been sold to longtime sales executive Terry Martinez, who intends to expand the downtown L.A. trade paper’s digital business.

Martinez purchased the paper from Teri Fellman, managing partner at Culver City law firm Fellman & Associates, and Fellman’s brother, Carl Wernicke, who lives in Connecticut. The deal was announced Sept. 10.

Martinez has been at the paper for 15 years, most recently as director of sales and marketing. She is now publisher and chief executive. She said she’s focusing on growing the digital side of the business: for example, producing more video content for the Web. She said there’s significant demand from her advertisers for more multimedia offerings.

“My plan is to further our penetration and offerings in multichannel, packaged opportunities for advertisers,” Martinez said.

Martinez added she will be hiring as many as 10 staffers next year to build out the digital initiatives. But she has not yet determined whether there will be other staffing changes in the near term.

Martinez was approached by Fellman and Wernicke earlier this year. They inherited the paper from their father and were looking to sell it since they did not have time to manage their own careers and maintain an active role in publishing.

The deal was for all of Apparel News Group, which also includes two other trade publications, one for the swimwear industry and one for the T-shirt industry. Terms were not disclosed.

Martinez said her investment comes at a time of recovery for California Apparel News’ advertising business. Core advertisers include garment makers, textile manufacturers and financial institutions. A full page ad in the paper costs between $4,105 and $7,300 depending on how often advertisers buy space. Readers include department and specialty store buyers and manufacturers. The paper says it has a weekly readership of about 19,000.

The print product continues to be the main driver of the business and Martinez said she hopes to expand print distribution. She’s also planning to start a series of networking events and webinars as she updates the long-running publication’s Web presence.

California Apparel News has been in print since the mid- 1940s. It was purchased in 1974 by longtime publisher Martin Wernicke, who passed it on to his children after he died in 2000.

Fellman said a more hands-on owner is needed for the paper to take the next step toward digital success.

“We realized the potential of the paper and wanted to ensure its continuity,” Fellman told the Business Journal. “We believe it deserved a full-time owner who gives it her utmost attention. We have every confidence in Terry.”

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