Wal-Mart is Too Big and Influential to Ignore

Circulation Management, July 1, 2003

Byline: Barbara Love

It's no small thing when a retailer as big as Wal-Mart, which has 3,000 stores and generates $244 billion in annual sales, decides to selectively eliminate magazines from its shelves. By itself, the chain accounts for 15 percent of magazine single-copy sales, according to magazine publishing executives speaking at a consumer power forum at the 2003 Circulation Management Conference & Expo in May.

It's now well known that Wal-Mart yanked three magazines targeted to young men - commonly referred to as "laddie" mags - from its U.S. stores the first week in May. Wal-Mart in Canada and Britain have not followed suit.

The three titles are Maxim (which usually sells about 60,000 copies an issue through Wal-Mart), Stuff (which sells 8,000 copies an issue) and FHM (which sells 10,000 copies an issue).

Wal-Mart went one step further during the first week of June, when it began using U-shaped blinders to partially obscure the sexually explicit coverlines of four women's magazines at the checkout - Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and Glamour.

These moves are bigger than they appear on the surface. They have prompted discussion on broader issues, such as the vulnerability of the magazine industry to one chain that accounts for such tremendous volume, and that chain's influence on other retailers, who view Wal-Mart as a leader.

Why did the chain target these magazines, and why now? The official word from a Wal-Mart spokesperson at headquarters in Bentonville, AR, is that the magazine titles were taken out in response to customer complaints. The company mantra is, "We are always listening to our customers." The spokesperson declined to provide details on how many customer complaints Wal-Mart received about the magazines or about who had complained.

Some industry watchers have noted the irony of the retailer's move to "clean up its act" in the magazine aisle, while it continues to sell other controversial wares, such as see-through bikinis, cigarettes and guns - which Wal-Mart classifies as "sporting goods."

Customer complaints aside, it's a fact that Wal-Mart is facing tremendous pressure from well-organized Christian groups concerned about what they perceive as a nationwide decline of morality and decency. These groups want Wal-Mart stores, which heavily populate the Christian heartland of the South, to be more "family-friendly."

"There are major campaigns undertaken by certain very organized consumer groups sending massive amounts of mailers into the stores," Michael Pashby, executive VP/general manager of Magazine Publishers of America, said recently at a Fulfillment Management Association panel on The State of Publishing. "Visit their Web sites and there are sample letters and sample emails that you can automatically forward. This is becoming insidious."

There are also large Christian-run investment funds, which buy stock based on moral responsibility, putting pressure on Wal-Mart to cover, move or remove titles they consider offensive.

But there's more to the story than customer complaints and pressure from the Christian right.

There is widespread speculation among circulators that Wal-Mart's decision to scuttle the laddie titles and now partially cover several women's books is in response to a sexual discrimination lawsuit its facing. A class action and certification motion in Dukes vs. Wal-Mart was filed on April 28 and comes before a San Francisco court on July 25. The laddie magazines were removed on May 8, 10 days after the suit was filed. If the court issues a ruling favorable to the plaintiffs - current and former female employees going back to 1998, estimated at 1.5 million - the women would be able to sue for lost wages and set in motion what is said to be the largest employment discrimination suit ever.

The amount of money involved could soar into the billions.

According to a recent Women's Wear Daily article, the plaintiffs' counsel is open to the possibility that there's a link between the removal of laddie magazines and the lawsuit. "Judging by their covers, those magazines might certainly be viewed by some as portraying women in a way (Wal-Mart) wouldn't want to reinforce, given their current problems," Joseph Sellers, an attorney for Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, which is arguing the lawsuit, told the fashion daily.

"We absolutely know that the two are related," one industry circulation director tells CM. "The first thing any lawyer would say when such a suit arises is to clean up your environment."

Speculation that the discrimination suit prompted the "clean up" implies that the removal of the magazines would be limited to Wal-Mart. However, other large retailers are following suit.

Peter Armour, senior VP, circulation at Conde Nast, another speaker on the FMA panel, said: "Our concern is that it's not only a Wal-Mart issue when it comes to censorship. There are other retailers out there that share the same views that Wal-Mart has. So, it is a serious problem for us. We're very concerned about it."