ASI® Acquires Modern Uniforms, Stitches and Wearables Business Magazines

TREVOSE, PA – September 22, 2006 – Advertising Specialty Institute®, the largest media and marketing organization serving the advertising specialty industry, announced today that it acquired Modern Uniforms, Stitches and Wearables Business magazines, websites and other assets from Prism Business Media Inc.

Wearables Business and Modern Uniforms principally serve the advertising specialty industry, while Stitches magazine serves contract embroidery professionals.  Subscribers to Stitches often work with ASI distributors and suppliers to decorate promotional items.

“The uniforms, embroidery, and general wearables marketplaces are playing larger and more important roles in the advertising specialty industry,” said Timothy M. Andrews, president of ASI.  “By bringing these publications into ASI, we are ensuring that we will be able to help ASI suppliers and distributors reach more buyers, and we can reinforce with readers the quality and integrity provided by the traditional supplier-distributor model.”

Andrews said that there are important benefits for both ASI suppliers and distributors from the acquisition.

“We plan to dramatically improve these magazines and their related information products,” Andrews said.  “We will make them more compelling for readers and, therefore, more effective tools through which advertisers can deliver their messages.  We have learned with our existing magazines – Counselor®, Advantages™, Successful Promotions™ and Supplier Global Resource® – that if you create outstanding products for subscribers, they will increase the amount of time they invest reading the editorial and the ads.”

“In addition, the 18,000 subscribers of Stitches magazine are a new potential market to which ASI suppliers and distributors will be able to increase sales of advertising specialties,” Andrews noted.  “We intend to help readers of Stitches understand the efficiencies of buying ad specialties through the ASI supplier-distributor network.”

Wearables, Uniforms Markets Growing

“The overall wearables segment in our industry is growing dramatically, and Wearables Business will help ASI serve that category more effectively, through education, news and product information,” Andrews explained.  “Uniforms is another growing segment, and one we think is expanding at several times the rate of the overall ad specialty industry.  By having a magazine dedicated to explaining uniform trends and new products, ASI distributors will be more effective in building their uniforms business.”

The 2006 Counselor magazine State of the Industry report indicated that wearables was the top category of advertising specialties sold for the last five years.  Uniforms continue to be an important segment, and 41% of respondents to the latest Counselor Wearables Watch® survey indicated an increase in sales of uniforms. 

Several resources will be developed to assist both the ASI distributor and the embroidery firm to connect and do business, by allowing distributors to quickly find qualified contract embroiderers anywhere in the country from among the 18,000 subscribers to Stitches. 

Joining the three magazines are related websites and e-mail newsletters, and ASI is considering the launch of several new products in markets served by these brands.

“These three magazines are very familiar to me, and were among those I managed while I was chief executive of their prior owner, Primedia Business Magazines,” Andrews commented.  “We look forward to integrating them further to provide more resources for the ad specialty industry.”

“This development is exciting, because it broadens the scope of our publications,” said Rich Fairfield, publisher and senior vice president for ASI.  “These magazines will provide our readers with the latest developments in these industries, and advertisers will discover more possibilities to achieve success with their marketing efforts.”  Fairfield’s responsibilities will expand and he will become publisher of the new magazines. 

ASI suppliers who have questions about the acquisition can contact Rich Fairfield, at [email protected].  ASI distributors who have questions about the acquisition can contact Dan O’Halloran, senior vice president of distributor services, at [email protected].

About ASI
Advertising Specialty Institute is the largest media and marketing organization serving the advertising specialty industry, with a membership of 22,000 distributor firms (sellers) and supplier firms (manufacturers) of advertising specialties.  Supplier firms use ASI print and electronic resources to market products to more than 19,000 ASI distributor firms.  Distributor firms use ASI print and electronic resources, which contain more than 750,000 ad specialties, to locate supplier firms and to market services to buyers.  ASI provides catalogs, informational directories, newsletters, magazines, websites and databases, and offers interactive e-commerce, marketing and selling tools.  Visit www.asicentral.com.