Hanley-Wood closes 'Kitchen & Bath Showroom'

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, March 15, 1996 by Jenna Schnuer

* Choosing to focus on new-media and other launches, Hanley-Wood, Inc., has sold the assets of recent start-up Kitchen & Bath Showroom to Miller Freeman, Inc. (Financial details were not disclosed.) Launched as an annual, the controlled-circulation title went bimonthly just four issues ago. But in a category that has witnessed shrinking ad dollars--as marketers put more money into consumer books, and superstores decimate independent retailers--expectations far exceeded the reality.

"Our original assumptions were a little bullish," admits Michael Hanley, chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based publisher. San Francisco-based Miller Freeman will use the title's 37,517-name list to build its own Kitchen & Bath Business, says company president Tom Kemp. The latter book has a mostly controlled circulation of 50,121.