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Ten Years in Puerto Vallarta with Lifestyles - continued by John Youden    fall-winter/99 The first issue came out in early December of 1989 entitled Real Estate Vallarta. It was in color and had 24 pages-including the cover! It's interesting to go back and browse through the early issues. First to see the changes that have taken place in the real estate market, and secondly, the improvements in computer graphic design. Both our design and the local real estate industry have come a long way. We began at the beginning of desktop publishing and the end of cut-and-paste. Today we produce the magazine entirely by computer. There were no homes listed over one million back then, whereas today there are over 20 listed and this price range is now very common. All the new projects listed have long-since sold out and are now 10 years old. Many of the real estate offices advertising are no longer around. Century 21 - Gold Coast had 30 employees on their back cover advertisement. Two years later there were just 13. And a couple years later they were out of business. It wasn't just Century 21, it was a tough real estate market. And to survive, once again, we had to diversify. We changed the name to Puerto Vallarta Lifestyles in the fall of 1991 and opened up our advertising to restaurants, galleries, shops and activities. It helped, we survived, and even got a little bold, opening up another publication about coastal living in Mexico called Yates y Villas. This gave us the distinction of being a national publishing company but we were still just a few people with a passion for making nice magazines. Printing and delivery schedules have always been a challenge, especially in the early years. In the spring of 1992 I went to Guadalajara to talk to our printing representative about when our magazine would be delivered. It was weeks behind schedule and I was getting nothing but empty promises about our delivery date. I met the Mexico-City printer in the lobby of my rep's office and he informed me that he hadn't even got the material yet to print, and had not been paid for the previous issue. Surprising news to me as I had already paid for that issue in full and was expecting the latest magazine to be delivered any day. We discovered together that the company representing us had got themselves so far in debt with the printer that they chose to print elsewhere, selecting San Diego of all places. It took months for me to get the magazine. We ended up not even printing a summer issue, going straight into fall production. A very costly learning experience. From then on we worked directly with our printers. Over the years we have added new sections, such as Stepping Out, which is probably the favorite part of the magazine for most of our readers. We went bilingual in 1997, although we should have done it much sooner, and in the Fall/Winter issue of the same year, we hit 100 pages, something we have managed to do ever since. With the Winter/Spring 1998 issue, we dropped the word "Puerto" from the masthead, which was a sign of the times for the region and us. We were growing and expanding our market reach, and so was Puerto Vallarta. It was no longer just the city of Puerto Vallarta, it was Marina Vallarta, Nuevo Vallarta, and many other towns and developments around the bay. Even Banderas Bay was no longer accurate; for many, the towns of San Pancho and Sayulita are also an important part of this region and should be included when defining the area. We prefer now to call the area "Costa Vallarta" and to continue with the name Vallarta Lifestyles for the magazine. Today Vallarta Lifestyles has a sister publication, Vallarta Negocios, which was just released in the early fall of this year. Our city map, which we began in 1995, continues to be the favorite for tourists and concierges. And with the release of this issue, we are announcing our new websites: PortalVallarta.com and VirtualVallarta.com, that we believe to be the most comprehensive sites on Vallarta available on the Internet. Now you can keep informed about PV through a subscription to Lifestyles and by visiting our site. And for tomorrow? We begin with an ambitious project, Vallarta 2000, a book to be released in January 2000 about Puerto Vallarta on where it has been, where it is today, and then opinions on where it may be tomorrow. Limited copies will be available on newsstands, look for it next to Vallarta Lifestyles! Follow this link for Vallarta Lifestyles Magazine ordering information.

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