"I had to do it"
If life imitates art, Aun Koh's new East magazine suggests that Asia is moving in a progressive direction.
The last Asian to start a regional publication was the Thai entrepreneur Sondhi Limthongkul. He launched his pan-Asian newspaper Asia Times in 1995. It went down in flames when the financial crisis erupted in 1997.
Enter a well-connected young Singaporean entrepreneur named Aun Koh. In June 1999, Koh, now 28, published the first issue of East, a glossy monthly magazine aimed at Asia's upwardly mobile young businesspeople and trendsetters. East reminds an American reader of Vanity Fair's mixed bag of Hollywood fluff and serious journalism: a recent East cover story featured Jacky Chan, the Hong Kong action film star, juxtaposed with articles about Sri Lanka's civil war and resort hotels in the Maldives. The photos, on heavy stock, are by some of Asia's best photographers. Published in English, East claims readership of 310,000, about half in Hong Kong and Singapore and the rest scattered around eight other Asian countries and the U.S. and Canada.
Koh argues that he and East can succeed where Sondhi and Asia Times failed because Asia after the crisis now has a large enough group of upwardly mobile and broad-minded locals, expatriates and what he calls "repats," Asians who have returned to Asia after living elsewhere for a while. "They are well-traveled and critical about what they choose to read," says Koh.
He terms his Chinese friend Quan Li a typical reader: He studied in Britain, speaks Norwegian and has a Japanese wife. The demographic profile claimed by Koh: a readership split 40/60 between male and female; 95% college educated; incomes starting at $60,000 and reaching $250,000. East's advertisers include Chivas Regal, BMW, Prada, HSBC, Ericsson, Hermès and IBM. From the 25 pages of advertising in the most recent issue one can extrapolate an annual rate of advertising revenues (at the one-off rate card price of $5,000 a page) of $1.5 million (Koh says revenues will be $1.8 million this year).
Koh's father Tommy is a Singaporean diplomat. Koh, who has spent 20 of his 28 years in the U.S., graduated from New York's Columbia University in 1995, spent nine months in New York freelancing at magazines, then landed a job in Hong Kong researching business deals as an aide to the entrepreneur Richard Li, the founder of Pacific Century CyberWorks. He left Li after three months to run the research department for Asia Inc, the ill-fated business magazine owned by Sondhi, where he worked on a proposal from Condé Nast to create an Asian version of Vanity Fair. Nothing materialized, says Koh, but "I kept ruminating on the idea. I had to do it."
As Sondhi's business collapsed, Koh launched his own company, Gnomadic Publishing, in October 1998 and started to raise money for East. Venture capitalists weren't interested, and advertisers didn't want to commit to a new magazine. Koh raised "several hundred thousand" dollars from family, friends and a few angel investors and convinced a small group of advertisers, including Apple Computer and Cartier, to run ads in the premier issue (they are still with East).
Getting good copy was the easiest part. Koh tapped into the huge frustration among regional writers and photographers who had ideas and photos but no place to publish them. Courting controversy, East had circulation problems in Malaysia because of an article sympathetic to Anwar Ibrahim, the jailed former deputy prime minister.
East's buzz brought two key partners to Koh: Ian Fong, the former commercial director of Singaporean PanPac Media, where he oversaw 31 magazines; and Yeo Han-yong, a former banker with Citibank who bought a 65% stake in Gnomadic (the rest is owned by Koh, Fong and early investors) for an undisclosed sum.
With the magazine as the flagship, Koh, Fong and Yeo hope to develop other products—books, travel packages, a TV program and a fashion magazine—under the East brand. To implement this idea, Yeo raised $2.9 million from private investors late last year. "We could have up to ten magazines by 2002," says Koh.
"I like its concept," says Steven Green, the former U.S. Ambassador to Singapore. "It's a very creative magazine."
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