Sharp launching Russian edition in partnership

Sharp, the Canadian men's lifestyle magazine from Contempo Media is partnering with the Russian publishing house Smart Readers to produce a Russian edition with a circulation of 150,000. According to a story in Marketing, the magazine will look the same and will contain three-quarters of the magazine's editorial content.

According to Contempo, Sharp is the first Canadian magazine licensed to serve the international market. [editorial and creative director Michael] La Fave said that Sharp had been eager to license its brand and content to foreign markets since debuting in April 2008, but that the company was first approached by Smart Readers.
In a release, Dmitry Cherkasov, general director of Smart Readers, said that the men’s segment has been “insufficiently served” in Russia, prompting his company to begin seeking out a leading magazine capable of addressing the interests of the country’s male readers.
“We were off to the races pretty quickly,” said La Fave of the partnership, which took about three months to finalize.

Sharp's Canadian edition has a circulation of 146,000 distributed mostly through the Globe and Mail and claims a readership of over 382,000, according to a company release. Contempo is actively seeking other foreign markets, says LaFave.

“The benefit of being a relatively small company is that we like to move fast. I would say that over the next year we will be aggressively seeking opportunities like this one.”