Future with a Past

In the ordinary way--through the mails --a handsomely tailored magazine last week went to 4,000 subscribers in the U.S., 7,000 in Britain and 9,000 elsewhere. But that was the only ordinary thing about Future. The editors had assembled their copy in London, had it set in Prague, and flown proofs to Britain for correction. After a three-week delay (while Communists nationalized the Prague plant), Future had gone to press in Czechoslovakia.

Roly-poly Wolfgang Foges (rhymes with bogus), the effervescent Viennese refugee who founded Future, had had to do it this hard way. To save paper, Britain's Board of Trade bans new magazines, but encourages them to print abroad--provided they sell only on subscription and keep off Britain's newsstands.

Two-year-old Future has built itself (at $1 a copy in the U.S., $1.20 abroad) a circulation of 20,000. Patterned after FORTUNE and aimed at the managerial class, Future's slick paper and color layouts make it the best dressed among Britain's dowdy magazines. (But its chief competitor, Contact Books, which gets around the government rules by donning stiff covers and calling itself a book, has better writing, a broader editorial outlook.)

Escape. To Wolfgang Foges, 38, Future is a show window for a resourceful printing company known as "Adprint," which is backed by Britain's potent chemical firm, C. Tennant Sons & Co. Ltd. Tennant helped Foges get out of Vienna shortly before the Anschluss; he had already made a name as editor of a youth magazine at 17, a fashion magazine at 23.

Under the Tennant wing, Foges founded Adprint in 1937, and made it a refugee rendezvous. It printed playing cards and catalogues, supplied teams of experts to produce books in "packages," all ready for publishers to bring out. Its cheap ($1) Britain in Pictures series sold 4,000,000 copies, ran to 120 volumes covering everything from windmills to cricket.

Invasion. Last month Foges secured a beachhead in the U.S. He reorganized Chanticleer Press, his Manhattan office, as a full-fledged publishing house. Next fall Chanticleer will invade the U.S. market with children's books, nature books, a series on American furniture, silver, etc.

Most Foges enterprises make money, but Future is still in the red, thanks to its printing costs -- $1.20 a copy. Nevertheless, it will grow from a quarterly to eight issues this year, go monthly in 1949. It cannot look forward yet to printing in England, but it is getting closer to home. Last week, things being what they were in Czechoslovakia, Foges & Co. planned to transfer their production to Holland.

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