Showsight - April 2022

A M E S S A G E F R OM T H E P U B L I S H E R DEAR FRIENDS,

T he show year is now in full swing. We have already had quite a number of record- breaking shows this year and, by the sound of it, this will be the norm for the year. These shows haven’t just brought our current dog show people more together… they have grown our community by large numbers. Staying at home and being more online has given us all a chance to introduce the sport of dog shows to millions of people outside our community. Due to the work we’ve all been doing, we are seeing many new faces at the showgrounds. This is amazing for us to see as, for a while, our numbers had been less and less. For meeting this challenge, everyone deserves a thank you from the AKC and the Parent Clubs, from Breeders and Exhibitors, and from Media Channels, including the dog show magazines. Let’s continue this great work for the future of our community. As the past couple of years were extremely tough for me to attend many shows due to taking care of my unwell father and having young children, I will make up for it—and more—this year. This year, I am excited to attend more National Specialties than ever, alongside All-Breed Shows, to connect face-to-face with Parent Club Officers and Breeders, and all who have recent- ly joined their clubs. This is how I will learn the true needs of each breed and make sure that all of us at SHOWSIGHT are concentrating on these needs throughout 2022. I am positive that many of you will have great ideas that will help the dog show community continue its growth. But before we put them into action, we will conduct interviews with many other dog show figures before making the final decisions as to what will be the best ways for us to achieve our common goals. On our end, we have kept everything we have been doing in print while investing five times more than we ever have in the past on our digital presence. Due to this focus, we are enjoying a steady stream of 15,000-25,000 visitors on www.showsightmagazine.com per day. We have been actively working with at least 100 individuals or breed clubs on educational articles and inter- views, and more than half of these are printed in each issue and all are on our website and social media pages such as Facebook and Instagram. Our process is very simple; reach new people with educational content, introduce them to a breed, steer them towards preservation purebred dog breeders, and have the breeder do the rest, which is hopefully not just to sell them a quality puppy but to ask them to show the puppy in conformation or compete in any of the AKC sanctioned performance events. While SHOWSIGHT is sent to all AKC Judges and distributed at dog shows, and digital editions are emailed to over 40,000 Subscribers, we are spending more than a quarter of our time each month promoting preservation purebred dog breeders. This will not change, as the majority of preservation breeders are not online, and many who are seem to be getting a lot of spam calls. I would like to thank all of the Parent Clubs and Breeders who are spending countless hours with us so that we can make sure the right content and the right groups are targeted. Now that we have launched an individual breed magazine for each AKC recognized breed, our success rate at retaining visitors has more than quadrupled. And a few more exciting things are in-the- works… so we will be speaking of these once they are launched. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any ideas that you might have, and feel free to submit educational articles and stories to editorial@showsightmagazine.com . Once your editorial has been received, we will reach out to you. We don’t publish any news or articles before replying and speaking with the author. Please continue visiting our website to stay up-to-date. We post new editorial daily, with breaking news and content in our breed-specific magazines. Looking forward to seeing y’all at a dog show.

Best Regards,

AJ ARAPOVIC, OWNER & PUBLISHER

Est 1992

40 | SHOWSIGHT MAGAZINE, APRIL 2022

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