Readers you can afford

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Feb 1, 1997 by Lambeth Hochwald

When you launch a magazine, your enthusiasm knows no bounds. Your budget, unfortunately, does. So unless your name is Time Inc. or Conde Nast, you must think beyond costly direct-mail strategies and News-stand testing to find more innovative circulation-building techniques. Here's how four entrepreneurs are meeting that challenge as they try to establish names for themselves.

fashionable events

In the fashion business, it's the decision-makers who matter most as readers. And Fashion Reporter publisher Matt Coffin knows where to find them. He's tailored his circulation strategy around placement, distributing the New York City-based bimonthly everywhere, from key fashion shows to the hotel rooms of fashion executives.

"One of the reasons this business works is that I know exactly where people in fashion are," says Coffin, who does business as Branded Media. "They're either working in the garment district in New York City or in a mart in California. We can then reach retailers around the country via database information."

Coffin launched the 25,000-circulation Fashion Reporter last March as a sort of Entertainment Weekly for the fashion world. So far, he's sticking with his initial controlled-circulation plan. The title is free for 75 percent of the largely New York City-based audience, including presidents and buyers of high-end fashion companies, as well as editors and stylists; the other 25 percent of readers pay for the magazine, either via newsstand or subscription sales.

To create the right audience mix, Coffin compiled his own list of names in addition to renting two others. (He's a fashion insider himself, having served as president of Model Properties, a licensing company for the modeling business he founded.) Overall, the publisher spent 10 percent of his $100,000 start-up budget on circulation costs such as postage, fulfillment and list rental.

Keeping costs low is an obvious goal for most publishers in the launch phase, so Coffin has focused his efforts on getting exposure at key industry events. He distributed 10,000 cover mock-ups and subscription cards at the New York fashion shows last spring, getting a response of nearly 16 percent. Reaction to Fashion Reporter has been so positive, Coffin says, that the publisher hopes to take the magazine monthly in March. His goal is to reach 40,000 readers by the end of this year and 85,000 over the next two years.

"Mossimo, a young executive and designer, came up to me at a trade show and told me he loves our charts," Coffin says. The charts, part of the "Coverage" section, track the work of stylists, photographers and designers on magazine covers. In fact, it's this section of Fashion Reporter that actually draws the most attention. "If the right people are reading us, that's the key," Coffin says. "It's our own kind of pass-along theory."

Over the next four years, Coffin would like to convert from controlled to 90 percent paid circulation through a combination of direct mad and cover wraps. This year, the team win test subscription offers and attach cover wraps to collect more demographic data. "We didn't want to worry about getting paid for subscriptions [at first]," Coffin says. "Since we're a hybrid -- we're read by consumers but predominantly by the trade -- we can get away with being controlled in the beginning."

the way to a

reader's heart

At On The Grill, publisher Barbara Fine is bowled over by the fervor of readers hungry for tidbits about grilling and barbecuing. In fact, 74 million Americans barbecue year-round, and Fine has built her circulation strategy around reaching them while the coals are still burning.

"We're trying to keep paid distribution and newsstand sales targeted where barbecuing is hottest," says Fine. The "hot" states include Texas, California, New York, Florida, Missouri and other Midwestern locales. "If one city in Texas isn't selling well, we'll add more titles to racks in cities like Dallas, where we know our sales are strong."

Based in Cooper City, Florida, On The Grill offers in-depth stories by grilling experts, recipes, new techniques, products and book reviews. It initially launched as a controlled title, sending direct-mail pieces to 125,000 people who had bought a grill within the past three months. Fine spent 20 percent of her start-up budget on fist rental and mailing to that list. Currently, the magazine has a mixed distribution of 50,000 paid and controlled readers. Nearly 15,000 grilling and barbecuing enthusiasts receive one free issue of the publication before the list is rotated, and 35,000 copies are sold through newsstands, bookstores and supermarkets. In addition, On The Grill is sent to select grill restaurants, Omaha Steaks retail outlets, plus 400 other retailers and gourmet shops. Although those issues were sent to retailers for free last year, Fine says she'll charge half of the $3.95 retail price per copy this year. But her plan is to keep the controlled/paid mix until the percentage of paid subscribers grows.

Fine expects On The Grill to have a pressrun of 75,000 by the summer, with an ultimate 80:20 mix of paid and controlled. It helps that the market of grillers has remained largely untapped until now, she says. "Except for the cooking magazines with their specials once a year, there's no true competition for us."