From the Editor

In July/August, when I announced that we were looking for a new Advertising Sales Representative, I missed a great opportunity to boast about why we had a job opening in the first place: the promotion of Thierry Bombeke to Associate Publisher. Odds are, anyone who has advertised with SSM in the past dozen years knows "Terry." He has been a fixture at the magazine for almost as long as I have, having signed on with the May/June '94 issue. Terry came to us as a Maine transplant (as many of us in the office are) answering an ad in a local paper. He didn't have a lot of sales experience, but he had a degree in marketing from West Virginia University and a true passion for wingshooting & fine guns. And, boy, did he have the gift of gab. Being from France by way of Southern New Jersey, he could talk faster than the guys who read disclaimers in radio commercials. In fact, in the early days he sometimes spoke so quickly that we had to remind him that we didn't want to scare advertisers but rather convince them that SSM was a great place to do business.

Whatever Terry was saying, it worked, and soon after he arrived we began seeing our numbers grow-both in terms of ad pages and circulation. (Of course the readership growth was primarily because of stepped-up promotional efforts, but there's also more incentive to buy a healthier-looking magazine.) With the ad and circulation increases came larger issue sizes, and what began for us as a fairly anemic-looking-and -feeling-magazine (early budgets precluded us from printing more than 84-page issues) has blossomed into what you're holding now: one of our largest issues ever.

Through the years, the feedback I've gotten about Terry is that people really appreciate his honesty, knowledge and passion for the sport. He isn't some mercenary simply trying to boost the bottom line; he truly cares about his customers and their success. In fact, a number of times I've heard him talk people out of advertising-sometimes because it's the wrong season; other times because the person wants to do something that likely won't work well, and Terry would rather miss out on the revenue than leave someone with a bad impression of the magazine.

With Terry's marketing savvy, knowledge of the industry and willingness to give advice, he has helped a number of companies get off the ground. (Some of those people still use him as a sounding board for new ideas.) More than a few folks credit Terry and their ads in SSM for helping jump-start their businesses.

So why am I waxing on about Mr. Bombeke? It's because I've long felt that ad salesmen -the good ones, anyway-are the unsung heroes of the publishing world. They're the ones who do the cold calling and talk up the magazines and who get an earful when there's a mistake in an ad or someone's phone isn't ringing off the hook. Yet when it comes to plaudits and praises about great-looking issues, those usually are heaped on the editors. It hardly seems fair.

I remember when I was in "J" school and afterward working with a large publishing company in New York, the message was that the editorial and ad departments were like church and state: never the twain shall meet. The unwritten rule was that editorial integrity was almighty and should never be influenced by advertising's "dark side." These days economic realities have blurred those lines somewhat, although we at SSM remain well aware of the value of unbiased reporting and reader confidence in what we print.

I think what makes working with Terry so easy is that, in addition to talking a good game, he "walks the walk." A lot of ad guys will sign on with magazines whose subjects they know nothing about. They feign interest in the markets and readers, but, frankly, couldn't care less -as long as they make their commissions. Terry, as mentioned, is passionate about bird hunting & guns. In the fall hardly a weekend goes by that he isn't out with his Rich Cole custom Beretta 687 and his German wirehair, Aires, chasing something through Maine's coverts. As well, since joining SSM, he-often with his wife, Michele, and his father, Paul-has shot throughout the US and in places such as Africa, South America, England, Mexico and Canada. "Business trips," I think he calls them.

The bottom line is that Terry is an invaluable asset to SSM and one of the chief reasons we're still publishing a healthy magazine that, presumably, you enjoy. So the next time you see Terry at a show or shoot (he's the tallish guy with close-cropped hair who's probably negotiating with someone), be sure to say hello and congratulate him on his promotion. Oh, and you could help him out by buying something from one of our advertisers . . . .

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