Why did In Fashion fold? Murdoch's newsstand clout couldn't help the title, which failed to meet rate base and soaked $500,000 an issue

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Oct, 1989 by Mark Cox

New York City-Extreme financial losses and failure to meet newsstand sales goals forced Murdoch Magazines to drop In Fashion, a monthly that the company purchased in 1988.

Since the purchase, Murdoch upped the frequency from bimonthly to monthly and only last May totally redesigned it both graphically and editorially. But the title was losing $500,000 with each issue says Phillip Cassidy, director of special projects at Murdoch; and that, plus poor newsstand sales response after the redesign, prompted the decision.

"It was primarily a problem on the newsstands more than with subscriptions," he says. In Fashion was a newsstand driven publication, with 81.5 percent of its 230,037 circulation coming from single- copy sales, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. "We were having trouble meeting our rate base," says Cassidy, who explains that the short term goal was a 250,000 minimum. Murdoch was ultimately shooting for a rate base that would have been twice that size, he adds. "We always wanted to be a niche magazine, but we felt that to be effective and service our advertisers, we had to have a 400,000 to 500,000 rate base," he says.

The single-copy failure is important to note, considering Murdoch's newsstand clout with such titles as TV Guide, and Star.

"We had a unique editorial product, and advertisers recognized it as reaching a different group of people, the 18-to 24-year-old, fashion-minded woman, and they were reacting," says Michelle Berman, former publisher of In Fasbion. "Unfortunately, we couldn't reach the readers the same way. The market just wasn't there."

In Fashion was started four years ago by VSI as a bimonthly, unisex fashion title featuring male and female celebrity covers to attract the dual audience. Murdoch purchased it and Sportswear International, a business title for retailers, for an undisclosed sum.In September, In Fashion jumped to monthly frequency and when faced with sagging sales figures, the move to redesign was taken as a last effort to save the sinking title.

Unisex approach didn't work

"When we bought it, we thought its dual approach to the marketplace was a key selling point, but the newsstand performance showed otherwise," Cassidy says. "We weren't getting enough men to buy a magazine with women's fashion in it, and the celebrity cover didn't really get our fashion message across."

Along with a new logo and extensive graphic changes, the editorial shifted almost exclusively to women's fashion and the celebrity covers were abandoned, but still the desired circulation improvements weren't seen in' the June and July issues. As a result, Murdoch decided that after August it would wash its hands of In Fashion.

The title was offered to numerous buyers with no luck, says Cassidy. Potential buyers must have thought, "If Murdoch can't do it, nobody can," says Berman.

Murdoch folds In Fashion after a time of heavy buying and selling activity. The company was carrying a $7 billion debt load in mid-1988, prompting the sale of a group of business magazines to Cahners Publishing for $825 million. Murdoch then spent $70 million for Soap Opera Digest, a title with a 1.1 million circulation, and a prominent newsstand presence.