Meet Joomag, the most complete online publishing platform

We passed through the era of printed media long ago. Nowadays, digital publishing has become the new trend for creating and sharing information and Armenian tech solutions can’t but accept the challenge here as well! Many people and publishers all over the world including Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, and Vogue are well familiar with Joomag, a leader in digital publishing services. This time, we’ve talked to Tigran Badalyan, Regional Director, Central & Eastern Europe, to find out the secrets of Joomag success!

 WA: Tell us your success story. Where did you start and where are you now?

Founded in 2009 by Ruben Vardanyan, Gurgen Ghukasyan, David Aslanyan and Vahram Darbinyan, Joomag is the pioneer in offering rich interactivity in digital publishing and a leader in digital publishing services. We provide integrated (all-in-one) solutions for publishing, distributing, tracking and monetizing publications, creating digital interactive magazines, newsletters, blogs, catalogs, brochures, e-books, etc. Our services are available through an online viewer, the design and functionality of which has been pretty well worked out. Moreover, we provide complete marketing solutions for publishers to be able to boost their magazines and for customers to engage more readers in the future. We even have a so-called "Awesome CRM" system, that enables publishers to create a contact list of readers, if necessary, and send them messages, provide discounts, understand the magazine's success indicators and so on.

Curiosity and the pursuit of something new drives our business. Achieving the best outcomes requires courage to stand by what we believe. That’s why since the beginning we aimed at entering the US market, because it is known as a mega arena for digital publishing: the idea creation, all the innovations, important progress go on in here.

The first move of Joomag was in 2009 in US. At that time, we realized that the accelerating decline in print would force traditional media to shift towards digital. Many publishers were entering the digital space by creating websites. Though websites may seem like a good solution, they actually fall short in many ways. As a result, we decided to start an all-in-one publishing platform. The idea was to provide all the necessary tools to create, distribute, track and monetize publications online, and still be accessible for everyone! This was a new value in digital platform. 

On our way of giving breath to Joomag, the biggest challenge is creating and developing a big and professional team. From the very beginning we’ve been looking for not only professionalism, but also bright personalities, energy and enthusiasm. We recognize that our strength and our competitive advantage is embracing the “one team” spirit. We work together to meet the needs of our customers and to help the company win. We are a big Joomag Family. We champion new, innovative and breakthrough ideas, therefore our team is composed of people with an enthusiasm for continuous learning and who thrive on tackling new challenges.
 

We prefer to find the best solutions and ideas that will take us forward in the quickest way possible. We move quickly embracing change and seizing new opportunities. Thanks to our team spirit and attitude towards our day-to-day responsibilities, we have over 500 000 publishers worldwide and tens of millions readers. By the way, among the publishers are not only individual users, but also media giants and successful companies, such as Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and many others. Those publishers use Joomag platform for creating their weekly magazines from scratch.  

In addition to our offices in Armenia and USA, we opened offices in Moscow and Munich aiming regional development. All our offices embrace team spirit. Regional offices are justifying themselves, so we will go on with expansion.

At Joomag we want to be the change we all seek. We have all the necessary prerequisites to improve our products, our people, our place. We change the industry by reimagining all that’s possible.

WA: How about the cooperation with foreign partners? Do they find something special about Armenians?

Joomag is always open to new challenges and cooperation. A striking example is the cooperation of Joomag and Getty Images.  This integration with Getty Images allows publishers to focus on content creation, rather than finding the right media. All publishers using the Joomag platform are able to license and use Getty Images premium editorial and creative images in a matter of seconds without leaving the editor, all at affordable and competitive rates. Another illustration is Joomag’s cooperation with Depositphotos. With a rich library featuring over 40 million images, Depositphotos has been added to Joomag’s digital arsenal to provide publishers with the means to integrate high-quality photos into their magazines.

WA: What would you advise the Armenian startups? Based on your experience what do you think is the most important key to success?

Armenia continues to be on the forefront of high-tech research and development. However, there are some unavoidable challenges to be faced.

Entrepreneurs in Armenia prefer to manage their business activities with their own financial assets. Generally, this is a positive tendency, yet poses its own challenges. Specifically, a lot of ideas and initiatives are getting lost because of lack of financial resources. Thus, institutions supporting startups, such as investment companies, incubators and venture funds, need to promote their financing opportunities in order to raise awareness among Armenian entrepreneurs.

Another factor hindering the success is lack of professional consultants. Before launching a product for international markets, startupers should attend international exhibitions promoting connections between members of the ecosystem. These will give them enough knowledge to understand the “Rules of the game” and enter international markets more confidently.

WA: What news shall we wait from Joomag in the future?

Currently, Joomag is going through major updates and soon our platform will be enriched with completely new solutions for digital interactive content creation and hosting.

Also, we highly value the involvement of young talents in crafting our future IT ecosystem, that’s why we have launched a series of free training programs for those who want to learn iOS and Web Development.