UL Press: Folio, November 2000
by Joel Stein
He tapped a magazine market others ignored - young, urban, latinos.
When Colombia native Rodrigo Salazar was a student at New York University, he discovered a media void. "There was no magazine that represented us, Latinos," Salazar says. So he and several other students launched one, called Conciencia. That experience prompted Salazar and his friend Jorge Cano-Morenoto take the concept to the real world, creating Urban Latino. "We knew a lot of artists, writers and poets who weren't getting exposure," Salazar says. "So I said, 'Let's use Urban Latino as a way to get the voices of Latino artists heard.'"
Salazar and Cano-Moreno spent $1,000 on their launch - the price of copyrighting the title. Their printer allowed them to pay in weekly installments: Salazar, who worked in his parents' bakery, and Cano-Moreno, who worked at a bank, took their entire paychecks to him each week.
Since Urban Latino's launch in November 1995, circulation has grown from under 10,000 to 100,000. Over the same period, ad pages in the 100- page book have proliferated from one to 30. Salazar hopes to triple revenues in two years, and to expand the brand into television, a record label and international editions of the magazine. "There's no other magazine that speaks directly to this market," he says. "That's why we've been successful."
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