Red 7 Media Acquires EXPO Magazine

Company adds show organizer category to its Event Group portfolio

NORWALK, CT (NOVEMBER 1, 2007) – Red 7 Media, a business information and media company based here, has acquired EXPO Magazine, a publication that serves the information needs of convention, trade show, and event organizers, from Ascend Media LLC, of Overland Park, KS. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition bolsters Red 7’s coverage of the burgeoning event industry by adding the show organizer channel to the company’s portfolio of industry-leading event brands. Red 7’s Event Group now represents the world’s largest and most comprehensive portfolio of print, online, and face-to-face resources serving the $150 billion event industry.

“With the addition of EXPO Magazine we now are able to provide total coverage of every aspect of the event business,” commented Red 7 Media CEO Kerry Smith. “Our portfolio of event properties – in print, in-person, and online – will enable us to provide our readers and advertisers with unmatched depth and access to content, resources, and opportunities – both via our current portfolio of products and services, and those that we will develop in the months ahead.

EXPO Magazine will continue to be led by publisher Donna Sanford and editor Danica Tormholen – industry veterans with more than 30 combined years in the business. “EXPO has found a home at Red 7 Media,” states Sanford. “This is the first time we’re a synergistic fit with the other magazines in our company – and our readers and advertisers

will benefit tremendously. Red 7 is a dynamic, energetic organization that will allow us to expand from being just a magazine to being a franchise that can meet our stakeholders’ needs across multiple platforms.”

Red 7’s Event Group includes Event Marketer Magazine, which serves the information needs of corporate event marketers; Event Design Magazine, which is read by designers of events, exhibits, and environments; Agenda USA, which provides planners with detailed information on event venues in the top U.S. markets for events via six regional publications and directories; and now EXPO Magazine, an award-winning publication which has been serving the convention and trade show community for 18 years.

In addition to these leading print brands, Red 7’s Event Group also produces several annual conferences, seminars, and trade shows that attract thousands of executives from the event industry, including The Experiential Marketing Summit, the world’s largest annual gathering of event marketing executives, Event Design Live; Agenda XPO New York; Agenda XPO Boston, and a multi-city TrendWatch seminar series.

Red 7’s Event Group extends its reach and dominance online via an array of websites tied to its magazines, as well as its recently introduced agendaonline.com RFP and venue search tool, which provides planners with detailed information, photos, and floorplans for 20,000 event venues across the country. The company has also launched the Event Marketing Institute (EMI), an online membership-based resource for event executives (www.eventmarketing.com). EMI features hundreds of articles, case studies, original research reports, white papers, calculators, video interviews and podcasts, as well as webinars and other information resources for event marketing professionals.

VSS Mezzanine Partners, L.P., also known as VSS Structured Capital, provided Red 7 Media with financing for the EXPO transaction. VSS Structured Capital is an affiliated
investment fund of Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) which provides non-control equity and debt capital to middle market media companies in North America and Europe.

“We are very pleased with our investment in Red 7 Media and the partnership with Kerry Smith. We are happy to make a further investment in the Company to support the growth in one of its core sectors.” said Thomas Kemp, a Managing Director at Veronis Suhler Stevenson.

Hal Greenberg, co-manager of VSS Structured Capital, also noted that this transaction is the fund’s fourth investment in 2007. “This deal fits into a winning pattern of providing non-control equity and debt capital to assist with acquisitions, growth capital, recapitalizations, buyouts and other corporate and shareholder initiatives,” he said.

About Red 7 Media
Red 7 Media, founded in 2002, publishes magazines and newsletters, produces executive conferences and seminars, and creates custom marketing and lead-generations programs in the event and publishing industries. In addition to the company’s Event Group properties, the company also publishes magazines and produces conference and trade shows for the publishing industry via its FOLIO Magazine and Circulation Management Magazine brands.

Red 7 Media was named to Inc. Magazine’s list of the fastest-growing privately-held companies in 2007, debuting at #585 out of the 5,000 companies ranked by Inc, and #1 in the U.S. in the Periodicals category.