The cover that put Stella on the map and the invoice that nearly sank it

I spotted her in Hohola from behind the wheel. She was walking home from work with a colleague one afternoon, and I knew as I drove past that she'd photograph beautifully. I doubled back, pulled over and introduced myself, feeling a bit creepy but glad I did it anyway. I had the latest issue of Stella in the car, which I showed her, and she agreed to meet me again with her family later that week to talk things through.

We shot the cover over a few hours at Ela Beach and around Gabutu, against the sea wall, the rocks and the urban scenes behind them. She was a natural, and she took the heat, the wardrobe changes and the onlookers in her stride. I had chosen her dresses from a secondhand store. The bold colours glowed against her skin.

The cover did its job. Issue 6 sold out. Even the archive copies are limited now. Readers told us how good it was to see her black skin celebrated and her hair left free. A PNG model on a Pasifika magazine, wearing her own hair, put the whole idea of Stella into one image.

The bill came first. For a year I'd paid the printer cash on delivery, and Issue 6, our June to July 2013 issue, was when I asked for credit terms. Every reader who bought that edition did so because I found a way to manage that payment.

The cover was the public bit. The private bit was timing. Cashflow is the order money comes in and goes out, and a magazine's printing bill lands before it sells a single copy. Advertising paid for the printing, and the cover price was the smaller part of the money. Credit terms hand you the copies and a set number of days to pay, which turns the wait between the bill and the sales into a deadline.

That first year ran six issues, one every two months, at 2,000 copies each. I sourced every advertisement in them myself, and where the advertising fell short of the printing bill, I covered the difference.

Suppliers extend credit to customers with a record of paying, and by Issue 6 I had a year of paying on time behind me. The printer left it to me to ask, so I negotiated the terms myself, and the copies of Issue 6 stayed with them for the three days it took. Those three days felt like an eternity.

The printer gave me thirty days.

Those thirty days bought me time, and the clock started with the invoice. I worked every part of the business at once to beat it, chasing new subscribers, new outlets to stock Stella and new advertisers, so the money would come back in before the due date did. The copies were out in the world by then, and my job was making sure they paid for themselves in time. Two new advertisers signed on, and I met the thirty days.

Anyone who has run a market table knows this shape. The morning the stall looks fullest is the morning the wallet sits emptiest, because the owner paid for the stock before the first customer arrived. A trade store owner restocking for Christmas knows it, and so does a tradesperson buying timber for a job that pays at the end. The cover sells the story of a business. The invoice tells the truth about it, and in a small business the same person reads both.

Stella made its money and spent it on the next issues. That's how I ran it for five years, and Issue 6 was the first time I saw the whole pattern unfold in a single week: the printer's bill that decided whether anyone could even buy a copy, then the cover that turned heads.

By 2015, Stella carried twice the number of pages, came out quarterly and printed 4,000 copies, and the bigger edition and the doubled run widened the gap. Each step looked like success from the outside, and each one added to the printer’s bill.

Issue 6 left me feeling I could make magazines forever. The cover belonged to the woman on it and to the readers who picked it up. The invoice belonged to me.

Who a founder pays last, and what that choice costs a decade later.

Best

Amanda

P.S. What’s your view on today’s newsletter? Did I miss something out that you’d like to share? Write to me, [email protected]. I may not get back to you, but I will try to read what you send in.

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