Katchafire Ships 10,000 'Revival' CDs In Hawaii

As Katchafire depart today for a 5 - date headlining tour of Hawaii's main islands, Mai Music are pleased to confirm that their new Hawaiian
distributor, Pacific Hawaiian Distribution, will this week ship 10,000 CDs into the retail trade of Katchafire's debut album 'Revival'.

The album, which has been out for almost four years, has been an extraordinary seller for the band, achieving triple platinum sales in New Zealand.

The Hawaiian success has come about through a combination of 'grass-roots' enthusiasm from the fans who had been importing both the band's CDs through local specialist record stores there for the past 15 months, and then airplay on local reggae and roots music shows that has more recently exploded into high rotate airplay for Who You With on Island 98.5fm and Cox Radio, where last week the single was playing every hour.

Mai Music General Manager, Victor Stent, who has just returned from the market, is delighted with the result: "Katchafire are incredibly hot in
Hawaii right now...the timing is perfect for their tour...and because we are now with the top local distributor, we will be in every store, from Borders, Virgin and Tower, through to the important chain stores like Best Buy, Cost Co and Walmart. We have exported 10,000 cds from New Zealand already to meet the tour dates, and as our distributor expects to sell out on the week of release, further stock is now on order."

Stent is confident of further local radio play for singles Giddyup and Colour Me Life, both from the 'Revival' album, and expects the album to easily
do over 20,000 units in the market.

"The Hawaiian audience loves reggae and many of the top radio stations have a reggae-dominated format that suits Katchafire perfectly. With this tour and follow-up tour dates planned for mid-year, we are making a serious push with Katchafire into this market, with the assistance of the new Outward Sound scheme launched by the Labour Government late last year. This financial support is invaluable for acts like ours who are trying to make it in very competitive overseas markets with high entry costs and this success would not have come so easily without it."

Stent believes that the Hawaiian success will create a platform for the band into the mainland US and reports that the current tour and
album marketing activity has already led to the 'Revival' album being stocked by 9 Tower stores on the US mainland.

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