30 YEARS, STILL RIGHT HERE – CX Turns 30

As of yesterday December 15, it is 30 years since CX founder Julius Grafton published the first edition of ‘Channels Magazine’, which was intended to be the house magazine for Jands. At the time, Jands CEO Paul Mulholland embraced the idea to help Jands through a big economic recession. Channels started as eight pages, in glorious black and white. Ironically, it had a glorious typo on the cover, the date was shown as Dec. 15, 1991. It was a year ahead of itself!

Two years later, it boasted 64 pages, many in colour, and carried advertising from most of Jands competitors. It was a quirky, bizarre aberration and a phenomenal success, with 12,000 readers. Grafton somehow managed to negotiate an exit from Jands, and started Connections Magazine with his wife Caroline.

That took off too, and a few years later spawned the ENTECH Tradeshow, which also boomed. In 2001 Grafton re-booted the magazine as CX, short for Connections and a play on the word we all love, SEX. “I loved calling someone and saying “Hello, this is Julius from CX. It almost always freaked them out,” he said.

Late last year Grafton sold CX and his media interests to Jason Allen who today can boast this is a very rare trade journal – it is proudly in print and digital, while almost all others have gone digital only. And CX has a continual and direct lineage back 30 years. All back issues of the magazines are online in our heavily trafficked archival resource, at www.cxnetwork.com.au