Howler to Make a Play Towards Digital
Two years ago, Howler closed its Kickstarter campaign after raising $69,001 and today it’s still making good on its promise to its 1,441 investors.
The print-quarterly about soccer has built its brand from the bottom up, and is now starting to hit its stride—without a marketing budget and with a muted digital strategy. It has capitalized on the loyalty of the soccer fans it serves, which is a culture renowned for its allegiance.
Still, Howler is a for-profit business and its founder George Quraishi admits the brand has a lot of work to do. “It almost feels like we lucked into the fact that we’re a solvent business and have been able to stay in the black without any additional investments,” he says. “Next year we will have to shift our strategy a little bit when it comes to digital, because right now about 95 percent of our revenue is coming in through the magazine.”
Nevertheless, Quraishi isn’t concerned about the brand’s glaring weakness because of the strength of its audience. “We have built an audience that likes what we do and we are on our way to building a big enough presence online to make the jump,” he says. “If they like what we do in the magazine they will like what we do online.”
While soccer maybe a small sliver of the professional sports world in the U.S., it’s still big business. But Quraishi doesn’t believe he needs to get every fan’s attention. “For arguments’ sake, say 10 percent of soccer fans would be interested in Howler; that’s great,” he says. “We are a niche product and aren’t dependent on millions of people buying our product.”