Organic Chic

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 1, 2003 by Michael Learmonth

Byline: MICHAEL LEARMONTH

Danny Seo has never been busier. The 26-year-old, editor, designer, stylist, eco-activist and Hollywood bon vivant was already a popular personal stylist - prepping engenues and leading men for their red-carpet moments. Now Seo has a new role as editor at large for Organic Style, where he will do what he now does for a select group of Hollywood stars - making sure they make a splash, but in a way that makes the right political, environmental, or philosophical statement. This can mean adorning celebs in non-conflict diamonds, organic fiber gowns, and leather-free shoes. Or sending them down Laurel Canyon in a nonpolluting vehicle, such as the Toyota Prius, or a natural gas-powered Suburban from the EVO limo service. "You have to be both stylist and ethicist," he says.

Seo is writing a monthly column in Organic Style about who's the greenest of them all in Hollywood, and getting actors, models, and other glamour-pusses ready for their star turns in the two-year-old Rodale start-up. The publishing empire built on compost and bee pollen is upping Organic Style's frequency to 10 issues a year and will more than double the rate-base to 750,000, in a bid to become the Vogue of the yoga/green tea/natural fibers set. With Leo and Britney, Toby and Cameron leading the way in their politically correct vehicles, Rodale sees a widespread movement to authenticity, simplicity, and environmentally correct, if self-consciously conspicuous, consumption. "It's the new luxury," says Organic Style editor Peggy Northrop. "It's a kind of indulgence that doesn't seem harmful."

Natural products are, in fact, the new chic. No longer relegated to the margins of consumer culture, they have become a huge and fast-growing category for retailers and advertisers, fueling growth at consumer magazines such as Organic Style, Yoga Journal, Health, Shape, Real Simple, and Self, and at trades such as Natural Food Merchandiser, Natural Business Journal, Whole Foods Magazine, and Natural Products Industry Insider.

The phenomenon and the ads have begun leaking into more mainstream books, too. Even Cond? Nast's shopping bible Lucky had an eight-page "The Best of Green Living" section, and has started to win advertising from Aveeno, Earth Therapeutics, and Queen Helene, makers of chemical-free cosmetics.

The so-called natural products industry is hard to define as an ad category. It's more of a meta-category that is a subset of many traditional sectors such as personal care, vitamins, foods, apparel, home products, building materials, even automotive.

And the demographic definition is equally squishy. So far, the best the advertising industry has done is come up with an ungainly catchall acronym to describe people who embody the natural products psychographics: LOHAS, or Lifestyles Of Health And Sustainability.

Of course no one self-identifies as a LOHAS. But magazines that provide access to the lifestyle and are comfortable for the consumer who drives an SUV to the grocery store to pick up organic baby food, or the mall to buy organic Armani, are thriving.

Even measuring the market for natural products is notoriously difficult - although everyone seems to think it's growing faster than the non-natural products in these categories. Size statistics vary according to where the arbitrary boundaries are drawn and who is counting.

The Natural Food Merchandiser, which has conducted a survey of natural food retailers for the last 22 years, sized the market at $36 billion for 2002, 6.6 percent higher than in 2001. This is a conservative estimate that includes mostly food, supplements, and personal care, and doesn't count sales of natural cosmetics and clothing in large grocery chains or department stores.

The Natural Marketing Institute, which counts any product that "goes on or in the body" (food, beverages, vitamins, supplements, and personal care), estimated the market at $58 billion in 2002. Neither organization includes other LOHAS fetishes such as sustainable forest products, furniture, hybrid cars, organic fiber bedding, apparel, or LOHAS-related services like yoga classes or eco-travel. Taking the broadest perspective, Organic Style associate publisher Stacy Bettman believes the market is more like $80 billion.

So where does the advertising go? In the beginning, it went to trade magazines. Marketers of organic and natural products were mostly mom-and-pop operatiors who needed to communicate with retailers to win shelf space. But the trend has gone mainstream. The dusty food co-ops have turned into gleaming Whole Foods markets, and small organic brands have been gobbled up by the giant food conglomerates: Boca Burger and Balance Bar went to Kraft Foods and General Mills swallowed Small Planet Foods. The conglomerates are even giving their top brands a natural makeover: Heinz is putting its brand on organic ketchup and Campbells is introducing "organic" V8 juice.

As the advertising moves to the mainstream consumer it's causing a gold rush among magazines that can appeal to the LOHAS ethic. Not surprisingly, Rodale was one of the first publishers to get it. Founder J.I. Rodale first applied the scientific term "organic" to a way of gardening and living, with his seminal magazine, Organic Gardening, in 1942. Granddaughter Maria Rodale, the current vice chairman, saw the LOHAS trend coming in the late 1990s and launched Organic Style to address it.