Garrels named sales marketing chief at Inside Communications

Garrels named sales & marketing chief at Inside Communications{mosimage}Boulder, CO — Inside Communications (ICI), the leading multi-title sports publisher, has named Bill Garrels to the newly created position of vice-president, sales and marketing. Garrels will head up all advertising sales and marketing efforts for VeloNews, Inside Triathlon, Ski Racing, VeloSwap and associated Web sites and events.

Garrels moves to ICI from Time Inc’s Mountain Sports Media and Transworld units, where he was Western Advertising Director responsible for bike, ski, and boardsports properties such as Transworld Surf, Snowboarding, Skateboarding, Ride BMX, Ski and Warren Miller Entertainment. He previously held sales and publishing positions at Outside, Meredith, and Fairchild Publications.

Garrels is a life-long endurance athlete and skier, who has finished Ultraman ’88, Ironman Hawaii in 1994, Wildflower 2004 and numerous other triathlons. He is currently training for his next triathlon adventure, and considers himself an avid telemark skier and road cyclist, and self-described OLN “junkie.” He is relocating from Southern California to Boulder to take up his new position.

Garrels’s sales and marketing specialty is selling complex multi-platform advertising programs involving print, Internet, video and event components to both Detroit and endemic advertisers. ICI has a presence in all these sectors, but to date has been unsuccessful in stringing together these complex packages, partly due to its separated brand structure. Explains Garrels: “At Mountain Sports Media we successfully changed the sales process to a horizontal model where we sold one buy across all properties, so I understand the challenge — and opportunity — of getting everyone working together.”

Garrels is enthusiastic about the opportunities at ICI: “I was amazed at the reader surveys for ICI’s properties; they truly own the tip-of-the-pyramid — passionate, involved customers that both endemic and non-endemic advertisers need to reach. We’re talking $100,000+ households who ride hundreds of miles a week or ski 72 days a year, and who think nothing of dropping $5000 on a 14 lb road bike or flying off to the Canadian Rockies for late-season heli skiing. Coupled with editorial excellence which is truly second-to-none, ICI essentially owns the ‘first-class’ customer in cycling, triathlon and skiing.”

Garrels’s appointment is the final move in a corporate overhaul that Inside Communications began last fall. ICI eliminated individual publishers and brand managers, re-orienting the firm horizontally on a functional rather than brand-basis. The former VeloNews publisher Ted Costantino was promoted to the newly created position of vice-president, editorial and production, overseeing all magazine, book, and Web editorial and production staff. Long-time VeloPress / VeloCatalog director Rick Rundall was promoted to the position of COO/publisher, responsible for the firm’s day-to-day business activities, and Garrels is the final appointment, responsible for the firm’s overall sales and marketing efforts across all brands.

About Inside Communications
Founded in 1987, Inside Communications publishes Inside Triathlon, Ski Racing and VeloNews, the leading multisport, ski competition and bicycle-racing titles; publishes books under its VeloPress and PeakSportsPress imprints; runs the VeloCatalog and PeakSportsGear mail-order and e-commerce subsidiaries; and operates VeloSwap, the leading cycling consumer shows in cities such as Denver, Chicago and San Francisco. In addition, the Company operates market-leading Web sites for all brands.