Amore is Born

Jessica and Zach make a great couple. This picture defines what my magazine, Amore is all about. My dream is to take Amore from an online magazine, to a national glossy publication. Amore has great potential to become a global brand. Each and every American has a chance at the American dream. For many it’s college, marriage, kids, and living in a house with a white picket fence. My American dream is something different. Something I believe to be a bit more complicated. I want to build the Amore brand. One that will be a universally known, “it will happen” I keep telling myself. It will happen. So I press on calling, e-mailing, visiting, writing, plugging, and talking about my dream Amore.

It all started back in high school for me. I remember walking through a book store and seeing the second issue of Maxim ever in the U.S. I still remember the cover with Gina Lee Nolan on it. I picked it up and looked through the pages. I remember thinking what a great men’s magazine. The girls (many) are hot. The articles are funny. This is something I could really start to get addicted to (and look at) every month. And so I did, I read and looked and thought.

Skip ahead two years and I am in college a communications major at the University of Southern Maine. Working part time for a television network affiliate with my passion being media. Study theories in communication really had me interested in this whole interpersonal thing. The theories on males and females and how they differ, then it came to me. I love men’s magazines, I love girls, and I love to go out with girls. Wait, they are so complicated.

“Wow, look at all these books on love and relationships. Look at all these DVD’s on better love, and sex even. I think I’ll watch t.v. Spike TV sounds like a good channel it’s a channel for guys. What’s this Blind Date or Shipmates? I think I’ll change the channel oh no it’s WE, what show is this? Single in the City? Ok I’ll stick with music for now I like music. MTV. Nope it’s Loveline on. Wait, Loveline. Look at that, guys and girls are calling in asking an expert and a regular guy about love, sex, and relationships. It’s a successful radio turned tv show.

I got it, a couple’s magazine about love. It will be for people my age, in there 20’s in and out of relationships, trying to figure out what this game of love is all about. Rather then the girl next door, it could feature a couple next door. Look at all of America’s twenty some things watching people just like them go on dates and commenting on what the guy and girl are doing wrong. Look at all the twenty some things calling these Loveline guys asking all these questions about love and sex.

There are so many magazines for girls: Cosmo, Glamour, Vogue. Look at all these men’s magazines I read, Maxim, FHM, Stuff. Look at all the covers, they all seem to be about the same subjects: love, sex, relationships, health, fashion why isn’t there a magazine for both girls and guys? Even though we are two completely different species, we are so much alike when it comes to love. The same problems I am having when I go out with girls are the same problems my girlfriends are having with guys they date.

I will start that magazine. I will put it together, and it will be great with compelling articles that both guys and girls can read. Sexy pictorials like what I use to see in the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. I just need a name; something says what this magazine is all about, something that says sexy, and something that says sophisticated like the couples that will read it. I got it! Amore. Love is Italian. Amore magazine it is. It will be a lifestyle magazine for the modern couple.

So here it is 2003, one year out of college. A secret I had kept for nearly three years I finally reveal for the first time. I start to tell the world about my magazine concept called Amore. I start to build it out, and over the next year and a half I do. Finally it’s December, and a week before I am suppose to visit New York City I did it my dream AmoreMag.com is born, the same day as my 25th Birthday.

Part of the branding was also creating parties. So we did, our first sponsored event. The Some Like It Hot! swimwear runway show. Now ten months after launch on the eve of our first Amore Lingerie Ball I write this entry. The Amore Lingerie Ball, a concept I dreamt one night last winter. A concept that will become a reality, a party that will be the biggest, best, and might I ad the sexiest party Maine has even seen.

Yup, the future is looking pretty good. I’m just trying to do my part to make this world a better place to live, and of course love!