Stairmaster science: with Fitness Rx, husband-and-wife team Steve and Elyse Blechman hope to unleash a secret weapon-science-on the crowded women's fitness category

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Feb, 2002 by Whitney Joiner

Fitness Rx

URL www.fitnessrxmag.com

COMPANY Advanced Research Press

LAUNCH January 8, 2002

SUBSCRIPTION $17.95/year

NEWSSTAND PRICE $3.99

AD RATES 1/6 B&W page: $750; full page, 4-color: $4,500

TARGET AUDIENCE Women 18 to 45

FREQUENCY Bimonthly

PUBLISHER Elyse Blechman/Steve Blechman

EDITOR Steve Blechman

Steve Blechman knows about family businesses. For 25 years, he worked for nutrition and bodybuilding supplements manufacturer TwinLab, the company his father founded in 1968 and grew into a $280 million-a-year operation with help from each of his five sons. Last June, Blechman decided to strike out on his own, but he's not straying too far from home. He bought TwinLab's Advanced Research Press, which publishes the 38-year-old Muscular Development and a handful of books about nutritional supplements, for $1 million. Now, he and his wife, Elyse, the executive vice president of the company, have launched Fitness Rx as the first move in building an empire of their own.

The bimonthly women's health magazine, which focuses on the science of diet and exercise, enters a crowded field of titles like Shape, Oxygen and Fitness.

ARP is starting small, distributing 150,000 copies of the first issue to the newsstand, although Steve says he anticipates the title bulking up to a circulation of one million. But that ambition exposes the Blechmans' conundrum. If the magazine gets that big, it will also become much too expensive for the nutritional supplement manufacturers that make up Fitness Rx's advertising base. Yet to attract the mainstream advertisers (like fashion and beauty firms) that could provide the financial fuel for that growth, Fitness Rx will have to abandon much of its editorial distinctiveness.

THE PROMISE OF SCIENCE

The Blechmans are convinced that Fitness Rx's scientific approach to health helps them stand out in a crowded market. "I find that a lot of the other magazines try to be all things to all people," says Elyse. "They have a lot of fitness information, as well as what color eye shadow to wear. We don't do that. We're much more targeted."

While Fitness Rx (tagline: "Your Ultimate Prescription for the Perfect Body") has a section of information on beauty-on everything from tanning beds to anti-aging creams--the magazine focuses heavily on training and fat loss. "I think women are really interested in that," says Steve, who also serves as editor in chief. "We have a real promise with our logo, and we have to fulfill that. We have to provide authoritative information that's applicable, that people can use and get results. If they don't get results, they're not going to come back and buy the product."

Like its sibling title Muscular Development, Fitness Rx's features ("Fat Loss Supplement Review" and "Low Carb/High Protein Diets--Greenwich vs. Atkins") are heavily referenced and footnoted. "If you make a statement, you back it up," Steve says.

Fitness Rx doesn't mention, however, that ARP publishes the Greenwich Diet. "From a health standpoint, we think the Atkins Diet has a lot of negative downsides," says Steve. "It's our responsibility to provide accurate scientific information. We don't feel that there's a conflict of interest as long as we're providing the public with a service."

Fitness Rx looks like it's taken much of its inspiration from Muscular Development. While Steve is quick to point out that the two magazines' demos are drastically different (it covers bodybuilding for men), they have many things in common. To increase Muscular Development's scientific credibility, he has gathered an advisory board of 22 members who consult and contribute. He plans to create a similar advisory board for Fitness Rx. And Fitness Rx, like Muscular Development, has a huge front of the book--4o-plus pages--filled with news items and information aggregated from newspapers and health journals. "I call it 'toilet bowl reading,'" says Steve.

Such an extensive front-of-book is unusual. And even if it's not the most elegantly written or illustrated, it's fast-- which is what the magazine's demo want. "I think his bits and pieces and factoids match up with the way readers in our demo are looking to get information," says John McKeown, marketing director for Fitness Rx advertiser Metrics and Worldwide Sport Nutrition.

The Blechmans say they expect total revenue to be 6o percent advertising. But they're not planning aggressive tactics for gathering newsstand buyers or subscribers, says Steve. "Without even taking sales into consideration, because that's too early," he says, "just from advertising alone, out the door, we're going to make money."

Here's why he's so bullish. In 2000, supplement sales brought in $16.8 billion, according to the National Business Journal--an 8 percent increase over 1999's $15.6 billion. While the industry might be big enough to sustain another magazine-"The supplement industry is one of the few market segments right now that has remained strong through a shrinking economy," says Vincent Scalisi, senior vice president/group editorial director of Weider Publications--relying completely on supplement advertising could alienate readers and mainstream advertisers. In the past, health and fitness magazines have worked to balance the two.