Fledgling ‘aduki’ wins Home-based Business Award

Food & healthy lifestyle magazine launched in May wins in August

Emily Clark is the editor and publisher of aduki,, a free, quarterly publication focussing on good food and living coupled with respect for animals and the planet. She says she’s not aiming to preach or convert, but simply to get people interested in food alternatives that don’t involve animals and in so doing offer useful info to the:

• health conscious
• vegetarian
• vegan
• lactose intolerant
• socially aware
• people interested in life’s alternatives.

aduki‘s great selection of seasonal stories and info is available in print form in Melbourne and for download via the website. It features food reviews, recommendations and info on:

• fashion
• beauty
• food & drink products
• books
• websites
• restaurants
• food stores
• nutrition
• recipes
• home ideas.

aduki is the only magazine of its type in Australia and is run with the help of a group of ‘really amazing volunteers’ says Emily. Revenue comes from advertising.

Emily started with the New Enterprise Iniative Scheme NEIS
She says as long as you are serious about starting your business and complete all of the required training and paperwork you have a great chance of being approved for NEIS.

She found the program really beneficial in establishing a work routine and developing a comprehensive business plan.

Marketing aduki
Emily attends vegan specific expos where she has access to her readers to gain feedback and to raise the awareness of those that have not discovered the magazine.

She has used ‘below the line strategies’:

• aduki has been featured in online magazines;
• vegetarian/vegan groups and businesses have including aduki info in newsletters sent to their mailing lists;
• links and information have been added to numerous websites, blogs and forums.

The strongest marketing tool is the magazine itself and the good word of mouth of readers. They pass it on to friends, tell others about it, point them to the website etc, which has been invaluable.

Persistance has helped overcome the ‘selling advertising’ hurdle
Selling advertising is not her forte, says Emily. A lot of the businesses servicing aduki‘s reader market are small business people like she is and don’t have big budgets for advertising. Getting the bigger players to consider the idea is a long term project, so, being persistent has been the answer.

As aduki is the only magazine of its kind people, do tend to have embraced the idea Emily feels. Basically persistence and the quality publication have been winners for her.

Overcoming the isolation of the home-based business
Not having constant ‘in-office’ support of an employee is something you have to come terms with. Emily has built a network of skilled and passionate people that provide advice and assistance and without them she says aduki would not be what it is.

If you make mistakes you learn from them
If she was starting out again Emily says she would not do anything differently. “The failures and set backs in the beginning are all part of the deal….but I have fumbled my way through and the outcomes have been great so far.”

About Emily
After high school Emily worked in a number of corporate jobs and didn’t really like the culture. She moved to university administration and worked in a marketing role at Monash University for a couple of years and it was here that she started a journalism degree part time.

Eventually she become frustrated with working for someone else and wanted to do something on her own. She was unemployed for a while and had an idea for a vegan food guide for Melbourne but after doing some research found that book publishing is very difficult to enter.

A friend suggested NEIS and the idea of a magazine came up. She realised it was a great way to create an ongoing career for myself and combine two of my passions…writing and vegan living. From that point ‘aduki’ has turned out to be bigger and better than she ever imagined.

DO contact us with YOUR business experience – PWF’s Small Business category continues to be a favourite with visitors to the website.