Samuel and his firm Mellor Media launched the delayed title last week opining that he was "very, very happy with the product" but that "there have been a few little indifferences along the way" that had facilitated its late arrival.

Since then How-Do has received numerous comments, not all of them publishable, connected to the story, with the majority being critical of the publication.

In addition, it has come to How-Do's attention that a website has appeared at the original domain name registered for the title - www.bnwmagazine.co.uk - that has seemingly been created to undermine the nascent brand and Samuel's plans to make it an established name in the regional business community.

Samuel: happy with the product

Samuel believes the site, and much of the criticism of Business North West, can be linked back to one source - a former colleague that has acrimoniously split from his firm.

In response to the site he released the following bullet-pointed statement to How-Do:

• A previous sales colleague parted company with BNW Magazine towards the end of March this year, having produced zero sales in 12 weeks, other than assist in collating a Business Link Northwest transaction. This person was indeed being paid in advance for this to support the situation.
• There was no written sales contract in place so the deal was purely verbal, based on an experiment for the launch issue which if successful would be subject to said person having shares in the title.
• In January, said individual bought domains www.bnwmagazine.co.uk and .com, with his credit card on behalf of BNW Magazine.
• When said person was released; somewhat disgruntled; their first action was to create new passwords for that domain name, meaning it was then unusable for BNW Magazine, and as such I had to find an alternative, hence the change to www.bnw-magazine.co.uk and .com – note the hyphen difference. This is now and has been for some months the official BNW Magazine web site. The old one has nothing to do with BNW Magazine.
• For information, said individual is now threatening legal action saying they have shares in the business based on some supportive email exchanges between us in January and February. This is totally ill founded, and has no substance, as all financial input came from Mellor Media Ltd., and there were no contracts in place.
• I feel too that certain ‘bogus’ comments are being made on How-Do too, due to some of the content which is pretty much unknown outside of the parties concerned.

Business North West is currently bi-monthly with a circulation of over 10,000.

The launch issue boasted features on Manchester, Google and Sport in Business, as well a feature on 'founding partner' Mere Golf and Country Club.

www.bnw-magazine.co.uk

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