In October, focus magazine celebrated its 3rd birthday at Coombes Johnston BMW Tauranga. It was incredible to see so many people who’d been involved with the magazine all in one place. Time to look back at some of the amazing things that have happened to the team and the magazine during this period of time.
Images of the event: HELEN CHAPMAN
It all started in October 2016, when Dee Collins published the
Breast cancer awareness will always be a very important topic for us. Dee Collins went through 10 years of treatment which helped her
First year of focus magazine:
Each October/November edition of focus is devoted to breast cancer survivors. In October/November 2017, for example, we featured inspiring stories about Emily Searle, Rebecca Tereu and Kathryn Clout. Though each cover heroine always secures her own space in our hearts, this particular article was the beginning of a really big friendship. We’ve worked with Emily Searle, the author of the Dear Boobs book, many times in the past few years and Rebecca Tereu became a regular columnist – surely, you remember her uplifting and informative articles for
Second year of focus magazine:
The 2nd Birthday edition with Kat Duranton and Margot van Cingel on the cover was an outstanding one in many ways. It’s been our largest edition so far – over 90 pages! It was also the first one to reach Hamilton and the larger Waikato region. Bay of Plenty will always be our home and local heroines remain our priority but there was so much interest in focus magazine from Hamilton, Cambridge and other towns in Waikato, it was impossible not to respond! It was the first cover, created by talented local photographer Vanessa Laval-Glad. We loved the results so much that we decided to ditch our rule of changing photographers every three editions and have been working with Vanessa ever since. She has already created seven covers for us and, we think, they keep getting better every time. And last but not least, after two years on the market, it was time for a big rebranding – we invited Alex Spodyneiko, who’d previously worked with Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Vanity Fair, Good Housekeeping and other international magazines that we all know and love, to refresh the look of our bi-monthly focus editions.
Third year of focus magazine:
Finally, here we are – celebrating a big milestone, our 3rd Birthday, at Coombes Johnston BMW Tauranga. It’s not only just Dee and her vision anymore, now focus magazine is a whole team of passionate people, working daily to bring the best and the most interesting content to our ever-growing audience, and a whole community of like-minded, confident and determined women around us.
In 2019 alone we featured the Mayor of Rotorua Steve Chadwick, the
Carol Garden (recipes and travel articles), Miranda Clark (Heart & Sole, friend of focus) 
Liz French (centre) is one of the authors of focus magazine 
Cath & Warren Heartley (left and centre) design ads and do all the pre-press work for focus
Caitlin and Bonnie work hard behind the scenes to ensure the smooth operation of all the processes. They also greet you at the reception when you pop by to grab a new edition of focus!
Lynda Johnston (University of Waikato) and Tara Kanji (Tauranga Girls College) – friends of focus
Thanks for being with us! If you want to subscribe to focus magazine and receive it in your letterbox for a year ahead, you can do it here. We look forward to many more years on this incredible journey.
