It’s been a year since my friend and business partner Jonny Hamilton came to me with an idea for a magazine called Pellicle, and six months since we brought our publication into existence. I remember our first meeting, and how Jonny excitedly pulled out some of his favourite wine mags like Pipette, Noble Rot and Glou Glou—each a huge inspiration to us—as we planned our own foray into publishing.

Our long term goal is still to produce a high end print magazine that takes in the best of beer, wine and cider, along with the delicious meals and inspiring travel that so often goes hand-in-hand with these. We have this slated for release in Spring 2020, and first drafts of some articles have already been submitted. We’re currently on the hunt for a layout designer that will help make our vision a reality, and we’ll keep you updated on this as things progress.

Photography by Matt the List—all photos taken at our launch party at Craving Coffee on May 1st 2019

We also plan to release series one of The Pellicle Podcast really soon. It’s currently in the final stages of post-production (the entire thing has been recorded and edited by myself, even down to our theme tune, hence the slowness). Following its syndication with popular podcasting sites we’ll be sharing a total of eight, one hour long episodes with you all at once. This will be followed soon after by the panel talks we hosted at this years FyneFest in Cairndow.

While we work away behind the scenes on getting these things ready for you, what we can be proud of is the initial success of our website. The response we’ve had since its launch has been nothing short of breathtaking. Over 31,000 people have visited Pellicle since May 1st, which is especially encouraging when you consider that over the past six months we’ve published just 30 features.

As we head into the next chapter of our adventure I wanted to give a shoutout to all the people that have worked so hard on producing the content you’ve been enjoying. There are too many of you to list you all by name, so to the 23 writers, 8 photographers and 4 illustrators we’ve had the pleasure of working with so far, thank you. The work you’ve done has been incredible, and Jonny and I look forward to your continued efforts.

Now for the serious bit. One of the coolest things about running Pellicle is that all of these people have been paid what we consider to be a fair and honest rate for their work. These are professionals, hustling everyday to get those commissions locked down so they can pay the bills. As a freelancer myself I know how tough this can be, so its a real privilege to be able to contribute to these folk’s livelihoods.

Pellicle was set up with a not-so-insignificant investment of £15,000 from my dad, Frank, who owns a minority stake in our company as a result of his contribution. After running the numbers this week, the total operating costs of our first six months add up to £14122.44.

This might sound like a lot, but we always knew our investment was only ever going to cover the first six months. The vast majority of this expenditure has been on our editorial, with each piece roughly costing about £400 to produce on average (some future pieces have already been paid for and our total expenditure accounts for this.) Some has been on merchandise such as stickers and pins for our Patreon subscribers (more on them later) and on administration costs, like that of hosting our site, paying for our email addresses and so forth.

Importantly, Jonny and I have not taken a wage so far (other than paying ourselves the same freelance rate all of our contributors receive when we produce an article or content such as photography for a piece). We’ve saved a lot of costs this way. For example, I built our website largely by myself, and the many hours we put into editing and content planning we have done thanks to the enthusiasm we have for producing a magazine we, and we hope many others will love.

To be completely transparent, we would like to grow to a point where we can pay ourselves, as this would free up time from other paying projects so that we can spend more time on Pellicle. We would also like to increase the rates we pay our freelancers so that we can remain competitive in a difficult field, we would like to be able to cover travel expenses for more ambitious stories, and we would like to free up more time to get our podcast and print mag over the line. It goes without saying that we can’t do this without you folks.

We Need Your Help

The reason we’re still alive and kicking after six months is thanks to those who’ve believed in us enough to give us their money. Firstly, a huge thank you to Hop Burns & Black, who after sponsoring us for six months have just agreed to sign on for another six. As part of this agreement from now on you’ll see their ads appear in a more prominent position on site, and we’re working behind the scenes on a few things with them to hopefully increase our offering to our Patreon subscribers.

What this means is that the footer space where their previous ad lived is now available should you wish to sponsor us. We also have room for an advertisement at the start of each of the eight episodes that make up the first series of our podcast. If you are interested in either of these opportunities please contact me on matthew@pelliclemag.com.

Secondly a huge thank you to those who’ve signed up to our Patreon page. This is our largest source of income, and the site would soon shut down if it wasn’t for your support. Whether you’re an individual contributing $5 or a business contributing $100 per month, your support means the world to us, and we’ve got some really cool things in the works especially for you. We’ll communicate these through our Patreon page directly, so make sure you sign up if you want to find out what we’re up to before anyone else.

However, at present Pellicle is still a loss-making company, and we need more support if we’re going to hit our break-even target of $2500 (just under £2000) per month. To help with this we’re adding a new $1 tier for those who’ve wanted to contribute but $5 or more is too much of an ask. This is based on the feedback we’ve had from a handful of readers and will be run on a trial basis to gauge its success. This tier won’t give you access to the posts we make on our Patreon wall however. It’s simply a way of pledging your support that won’t cost the earth.

To date we have 85 subscribers. If just 1% of the 31,000 people who have read our little magazine so far decided to pledge, we’d have more than three times as many supporters, and we’d likely already be sustainable, in turn working on increasing the volume and quality of content we produce.

We understand that not every reader is in the position to support us financially. However, you can still help out in other ways, the simplest of which is to share links to our articles and tell as many of your friends about us as possible. We’re a teeny tiny magazine that barely anyone has heard of. Dropping a link on Facebook or Twitter could open us up to an audience that didn’t know we existed.

Something I said at our launch party, which still holds true, is that I believe great magazines and publications, whether they’re online, in print, video or podcast, contribute something vital to the drinks industry. If farmers are at the very beginning of the drinks industry chain, then it’s the writers, photographers and illustrators (and, of course, we the drinkers) that form its final link.

We are the people who have tasked ourselves with sharing the joy and deliciousness we find in a glass of our favourite beer, wine or cider. Our job is to make people excited and passionate about food and drink as we are, hopefully opening our culture to more in the process. With your help we can grow Pellicle into something we hope will become culturally significant. Put simply we want to make people thirsty, and with your help, we can make this vision a reality.