Telecom Gear, once the largest magazine for advertising used equipment, has been discontinued. The Mart, which for a while eclipsed the Gear, has also gone out of print. The Mart’s parent company has been dissolved in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Founded in 1985 as a derivative of Teleconnect Magazine, Telecom Gear was credited by many for creating a national secondary market. In the pre-Internet age, it sewed together dealers, resellers and repair companies into what emerged as an international secondary market for telecom equipment. The publication was originally conceived as a job’s gazette, which would list work orders for on-site work. But after a California company called SPOC began running multiple full-page ads, other resellers quickly joined in, making the publication viable. In the early nineties a number of Gear employees went to work for Mike Story and formed The Mart, whose format was very similar to the The Gear, which passed ownership a number of times, finally ending up as a part of Dominion Enterprises.
Dominion made no public announcement of the closure. The Mart’s owner, Story Publications, declared bankruptcy in 2006, but continued to publish it into early 2007. No public announcement was made in The Mart’s closure, but people familiar with the matter said that the company simply ran out of funds. The company then filed Chapter 7, which is designed to dissolve the company.
The decline occurred rapidly. As of December 2006 the two publications together had over 300 pages of retail advertising, which was slightly above 2005 levels.
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