First Issue of CIRK Magazine by Tsuro Sells Out in Hours

This week marked the release of the very first issue of CIRK magazine … and it sold out in a matter of hours. The edition is called “obrazUvanie” (a playful word blending “education” and “formation”) and it brings together personal stories, interviews, and poetry centered around the theme of what truly shapes us as human beings. The different fragments in the issue explore the environment that builds us, the people we encounter, our differences, and the features shared across generations.

Across nearly 100 pages, CIRK allows us to see the world through the eyes of many voices — to be serious, but also to laugh with the unique humor we already know so well from Tsuro. Honestly, we can’t wait to find out what theme will be explored in the second issue of CIRK.

Besides being huge fans of Tsuro, we also had the honor of building and maintaining the website where CIRK is sold — tovaecirk.com. The platform features an online store as well as a blog and has recently become the exclusive place where fans can actually purchase the magazine. If you can even manage to catch a copy, that is.

The first issue of CIRK was released on September 15th, exactly one year after Tsuro’s wedding to his wonderful wife Victoria. For our team, preparations for the big day started just a little under two weeks earlier.

Kick-off Phase

To make sure tovaecirk.com could handle the thousands of fans expected at the exact moment Tsuro announced the magazine’s release, we had to run special stress tests. This was done using thousands of “bots” that we unleashed on the platform to simultaneously add the product to their cart and attempt to complete their purchases.

Such extreme testing is necessary in cases like this, when a huge wave of visitors is expected to make purchases at the same time. The more users rush in, the higher the chance something could go wrong.

To ensure the platform could manage 10,000 simultaneous requests, we built the site to rely not just on one, but on four so‑called “replicas” along with a traffic balancer that distributes users between the replicas based on their workload. If that last sentence sounds complicated to you, just imagine how complicated it was for us to figure out how to explain it in words.

Building the platform also included full integration with CIRK’s chosen shipping company, so that every customer would be able to correctly enter their delivery details. Since all payments are made exclusively online, we also made sure that invoices are automatically generated with every completed purchase. And at the end of every month, the system can generate an audit file, ready for reporting to the tax authorities.

Lauch Day

Launch day for the very first issue began with a post on Tsuro’s Instagram profile at 11:00 AM, where he shared the link to tovaecirk.com, the only place fans could get the magazine. Just before that, our team had the responsibility of officially opening CIRK for sales.

For all of us, it was a moment filled with emotions — excitement mixed with a hint of tension. Throughout the entire day, we closely monitored the platform in real time to make sure every visitor could go through the ordering steps smoothly.

Traffic peaked in the first two hours after the announcement, during which more than half the first print run was sold out. By the end of the working day, all available copies were already on their way to new readers.

That big day brought less than 0.7% discrepancies between received payments and successfully recorded orders on the platform. To make sure no one was left disappointed, we carefully tracked and resolved each inconsistency — ensuring that every customer who ordered CIRK received their rightful copy.

The incredible demand for the magazine surprised even our team and quickly led to a reprint order plus the express rollout of a pre‑order option.

Final Notes

Building the online shop tovaecirk.com and living through launch day of the very first issue of CIRK was both a real pleasure and a huge responsibility for our team. And of course, even as you’re reading this article, somewhere, someone on the team is still working on making the platform even more efficient. Because maintaining a website is no less important than building it in the first place.

We want to thank Tsvetosav Tsonev – Tsuro and Victoria Tsoneva — the Tsonevi family — for their trust. We also thank them for their effort, patience, and attention to every detail, which you can literally see on the pages of CIRK.

Order a copy and read it yourself. It’s worth it.