Organic Chic

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

"There were a lot of very small, difficult magazines that most people didn't enjoy," Rodale says. "They were very alternative and extremist. Most women I know want to balance their needs - do the right thing and still do what they love."

The response to Organic Style's slick-yet-sincere formula has been so strong that Rodale now talks about someday growing circulation to as much as 2 million.

Flooding the zone now is David Pecker's American Media Inc., which acquired Weider titles Natural Health, Shape, Fit Pregnancy, and Living Fit. "Clearly American Media has identified a huge growth trend in the marketplace, particularly women are gravitating to this lifestyle," says group publisher Carolyn Bekkedahl. "This upward trend is endless."

Another magazine that was well positioned for the LOHAS trend is Yoga Journal. Started as an 8-page newsletter in 1975, the magazine plugged along at about 90,000 circulation until it was bought in 1998 by former Citicorp investment banker John Abbott. Since then, the magazine has ridden the yoga phenomenon to a circulation of 300,000 and even has a spokes-celeb, Christy Turlington, as an editor-at-large on the masthead.

In August, Yoga Journal published a 196-page issue, fattened up with advertising from makers of natural foods, emollients, and even, gasp, a fossil fuel-burning minivan. Publishing director Nina Sventitsky says natural products typically account for 70 percent of the magazine's ad mix. These days, that includes pages from Kraft and General Mills, which are jumping on the natural products trend with organic reformulations. "I think it's an indication of the broad interest in all things healthier, simpler, organic, paying attention to labels," says Sventitsky. "Yoga Journal has benefited from this."

The LOHAS Reading List

The same phenomenon is fattening up Health magazine. Vice president and publisher Jennifer Deans says she's seeing all sorts of products, from food to cosmetics to cars come into books like hers. "This used to be a very fringe group of people you were talking about," she says. "Now it's a mass group of people."

One measure of how mainstream the phenomenon has become is the slowdown in growth for the pioneers. Makers of natural products began running ads in the food trades back when they were still fighting for shelf space in grocery stores. As the business of marketing natural products matures, the focus is shifting from retailers to consumers.

Still, the trade publishers that got into the market at the beginning are enjoying the benefits. Beleagured Penton Media is an example. In early 1999, coming off a year of record revenues and flush with cash from an IPO, Penton made one prescient move before its tech portfolio dragged it into the Internet undertow. It acquired a little-known 24-year-old natural products media company in Boulder, Colorado called New Hope Media for $82 million.

New Hope publishes four trade magazines for natural food retailers, including Nutrition Business Journal and Natural Food Merchandiser. The company controls close to 50 percent of the trade advertising market for natural products and is the engine behind Penton's Lifestyle Media division, which generated 6.7 percent of Penton's earnings in the second quarter of 2003, up from 6.5 percent the year before. The company also runs the hugely profitable Natural Products Expos in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, which attract natural product distributors and retailers.