About
PGI Publication Inc. offers two publications for automotive dealers in the Puget Sound area; The Auto Book and the premier Spanish-only magazine in Washington State, Cars and Carros.
PGI Publication Inc. published our first magazine in November of 2008.
Our vision is to offer a high quality print publication and at the same time lower the cost of advertising for dealers by utilizing and developing tools that make the transfer of photos and data more affordable.
Goals:
We strive to do for the Auto Magazine business what we have done for the Internet business in the past, to use technology to become more efficient and lower the cost of advertising for our clients.
We constantly analyze the distribution points, obtaining new ones (we put the first auto magazine on all the Army, Navy, and Air force bases in the Puget Sound Area) and are continually/constantly looking for better ways to reach more buyers. Our distribution is second to none. We are distributed in over 1850 locations.
Service:
We field the largest network of photographers in Washington State covering 95% of the areas where dealers are located.
With well over 2 million cars photographed in the last 8 years (that is well in excess of 18,000,000 photos) and servicing a network of over 300 dealers every week, we have the most experienced and professional team to handle dealer’s needs.
Our print sales team is headed by Olivier V. Paramo, with over 10 years of experience in automotive marketing he delivers the most comprehensive and up to date service to our dealers.
Technology:
Our uniquely designed databases allow dealers to quickly build, on their own or with our sales team, the necessary inventory for their ad and review it before is sent to the composing department. This unique process not only saves time and money but it also allows dealers to have a preview of their ad before it is sent to us. We have also decreased the time and at the same time increased the quality of the ad copies by providing PDF files for our clients in their inventory management system for review before they are printed.
We will continue to improve our systems to make the print magazines more affordable and flexible to dealer’s needs.
The Auto Book
As the premier English magazine in Washington state, The Auto Book provides dealers with a distribution second to none, printing in excess of 100,000 copies per month, and the highest quality printer in the market.
The Auto Book is distributed at (but not only): 7/11, Albertsons, Fred Meyer, Safeway, QFC, Kmart, Sears, Regal Cinemas, Cost Cutters, Winco foods, AMPM, Red Apple, Big Lots, Sunset Market Place, Saars, Hollywood Video, Blockbuster, Top Foods, McCord Airbase, Fort Lewis, Everett Naval Station, gas station network (Texaco, Shell, etc), taco trucks, Applebee’s, Sam’s club, Hispanic market stores and Walmarts. Our goal has been and will be to saturate the market with our publications.
A little history:
The Auto Book started as we saw the corporate magazines (Harmons, Automart, Auto Extra), etc disappear from Washington and the dealer’s choices reduced to just one other publication. The choices went from 4 or 5 publications to just one and we felt that we could create a publication for dealers that would balance cost vs product (you can always lower the cost at the expense of quality, distribution, etc).
We soon discovered that both print and distribution could be optimized and improved. We also realized that by using our existing technology we could cut costs by at least 20%. We became extremely involved in the project, making a publication that exceeded our expectations in just 3 months
Olivier V. Paramo comments that “you can’t just put the magazine out there and hope for the best, doing what you have been doing for the last several years doesn’t work either. You must monitor and adapt to where consumers are going and that may be different from month to month. Yago and I go to the movies almost every Friday and were surprised to find out that there were no magazines at the movie theaters. The next day, on a Saturday, we called everyone to find out who controlled that distribution. By next week we had the magazines at the movies where thousands of people go every weekend.”
Yago Paramo comments that “complacency doesn’t really settle in here, we are constantly questioning why the magazine is not here and why not there. Things can always be improved especially with people as driven as Oli and I.”
Cars and Carros
As the premier and only Spanish-only auto magazine in Washington state, Cars and Carros provides dealers with a distribution in the Hispanic market second to none, printing in excess of 50,000 copies per month, and the highest quality newspaper printer in the market.
Cars and Carros also offers an expanded reach distribution by going out of the Hispanic distribution and into places like 7/11, AMPM, Fred Meyer, etc making this magazine a unique vehicle to drive lower priced vehicles regardless of the buyer’s native tongue.
A little history:
Cars and Carros grew up from a small project called Seattle Carros. Back in 2008 we started Seattle Carros but as we grew the magazine it became apparent to us that a non geo-related term was needed to expand the magazine’s distribution.
Yago Paramo comments that “we soon realized by listening to the phone calls that many English speaking buyers were calling from this magazine. By checking the pick-up ratio on distribution points and, less scientifically, by sitting in the car and watching people pick it up, we concluded that people of all tongues picked up the magazines based on the type (price driven) of vehicle they were looking for rather than the language of the options in the ad”. This was very interesting and that is when we decided to provide a web site with the magazine, www.carsandcarros.com and expand the distribution to non-Hispanic stores for this magazine too.
Olivier V. Paramo comments that “Yago and I have been working with the Hispanic market since ‘96. We have learned a few things over the years that are really helping us market this magazine properly.”
