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'Razor' - Chmn. & CEO, CNNfn
THE BIZ: CNNfn

SHOW: THE BIZ 12:30 PM Eastern Standard Time
August 26, 2003 Tuesday
Transcript # 082602cb.l27
SECTION: Business

LENGTH: 1143 words

HEADLINE: 'Razor' - Chmn. & CEO, CNNfn

GUESTS: Richard Botto

BYLINE: David Haffenreffer

BODY:
DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNNfn ANCHOR, THE BIZ: Well, somewhere on the newsstand between "Maxim" and "FHM" lies "Razor" magazine. The three year old title prides itself on being beyond a beer and babes mentality of many of its competitors. Richard Botto founded the magazine and runs its publishing office out of Scottsdale, Arizona, which is a rarity for an industry that is based mainly out of Sixth Avenue here in New York City and, of course, L.A. Richard joins us now from Phoenix, Arizona.

Welcome.

RICHARD BOTTO, CHMN. & CEO, "RAZOR" MAGAZINE: Hi, David. How are you?

HAFFENREFFER: Where do you find yourself editorially? You don't consider yourself one of those so called laddie book. It's somewhere in-between that and, what, a "GQ" on other side?

BOTTO: Yes. You started the introduction by saying between "Maxim" and "FHM" and it's quite really a little bit different than that. We find ourselves between the "Maxims" and the "GQs" and the "Esquires." "Maxim" is obviously a laddie book and is catering to the college frat house mentality but at some point you have to get beyond that mentality and move on. And then on the other side of the spectrum you have "GQ" and "Esquire" which cater to a more staid, old guard, older generation type of male and we're filling the middle ground.

HAFFENREFFER: OK. How do you do that?

BOTTO: Well, the way we do it is we treat men like men and women like women. The women that are profiled in some of the laddie books are obviously there for the T&A. The men are treated as the bar crowd, the 10 best pickup line crowd. We don't cater to that. Where we go is we go to the guy that's ready to move beyond that mentality, a guy that's looking for a level of success, is always striving for more and is always striving to be a little bit more successful and to do things with their lives that maybe the average college guy isn't ready to do yet.

HAFFENREFFER: You started the magazine fall of 2000, no previous experience in the publishing industry.

BOTTO: Correct.

HAFFENREFFER: Tell me about the challenges that you faced getting involved in a business where I'm sure advertisers were curious to know what you'd done before this.

BOTTO: Well, advertisers looked at us as an independent title and in a way we're a dinosaur but maybe we're a new breed of dinosaur. What I mean by that is, we're a company that's going out there and saying, look, we don't need to be in the middle of New York City or we don't need to be in the middle of L.A. It's a virtual world and we're putting out a product right now that's unlike anything that is on the newsstand. You could say that the men's magazine genre is crowded and I could argue the fact that it's really not. That there is a full spectrum of magazines to the left, which are the laddie books, and a full spectrum to the right, which are the "GQ" and "Esquire" and there's nothing catering to the successful 20 something and 30 something. So I think we've done a good job in proving to advertisers that we are a magazine that caters to many of the products that they're offering.

HAFFENREFFER: I would imagine that if you don't base your magazine out of New York or L.A. at this point, then you spend your life on an airplane going to New York and L.A. to talk to the advertisers and maybe writers in the process as well. Are you on the road a lot?

BOTTO: We do a lot of traveling but we have advertisers based in all the major cities and in the places they need to be, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Texas, L.A. So we have people in the right areas meeting the right people at all times.

HAFFENREFFER: What are the challenges on the marketing side of a magazine like this where you're trying to go after a particular demographic in a field that among a total list of men's magazines does look crowded from the outside?
BOTTO: Well it's about branding. It's about putting your brand out there and our competitors are doing a good job clearing the field for us. You have again the old guard magazine such as "Playboy" and "GQ" that are in a serious state of flux, that are trying to follow the laddie trend right now and you have the laddie books who a lot of people will say are dumbing (ph) down their editorial, dumbing down even further and we're staying the course. We're saying that there is room for a magazine in 2003 for a real man, a gentleman, and we're just going out and branding that. That a "Razor" guy is a guy who's a successful guy and a guy that's a confident and a guy that's much, much more than sitting on his couch on a Saturday afternoon sucking down beer and watching Adam Sandler movies.

HAFFENREFFER: Which, depending on how you feels, I guess, doesn't sound like all such a bad thing.

BOTTO: Well, at some point you got to get beyond that.

HAFFENREFFER: Sure. You sent along some copies here and you got, on the September issue here, Tara Reid on the cover. But it's not the article that people might think. It's not really the article of sort of entirely praising her. It has a lot to do with her behavior and how she might be sort of in a difficult spot in her career.

BOTTO: Yes, absolutely. There is another magazine in our genre right now that has a similar cover - or I shouldn't say similar, has a cover of Tara Reid in a bikini, as you might imagine, with a similar article about her fallacies, her fall from grace, so to speak, and her lost promise and that's pretty much what the article's about. "Razor" magazine is a very real magazine. It's a truthful magazine. We're not afraid to pull punches. We're not afraid to profile life and her article is a perfect example of that.

HAFFENREFFER: "People" magazine picked you as one of the 25 hottest bachelors this past June. How did that affect business?

BOTTO: It affected it in a positive way, I guess. It certainly brought some attention to the magazine, which was the purpose. I think it's a great thing to have a face to the name and a face to the brand. I think that if anybody who has followed the magazine industry at any point of their lives or anybody that has recognize the fact that one of the reasons why "Playboy" was so successful was the fact that Hugh Hefner was a name to the brand. So I definitely think that "People" magazine thing helped in that regard.

HAFFENREFFER: Are you going to be our modern-day Hugh Hefner?

BOTTO: I don't know if I'll be running around with seven blondes at 75 years old but I'd certainly like to follow his model of success.

HAFFENREFFER: All right, Richard, well best of luck to you. Thanks for coming on the program.

BOTTO: Thanks, David.

HAFFENREFFER: Richard Botto from "Razor" magazine.

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