Traditional Home improvement

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management,  April 15, 1996  by Jennifer Sucov

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The diversity in today's shelter category is mind-boggling. For every conceivable decorating style, there exists a magazine--and another, and still another. It's like the circus act where clowns tumble out of the car in a seemingly endless stream. How they all fit is a mystery, and just when you think you've seen the last one, another emerges from the back seat.

To survive in this increasingly competitive and splintered market--a market with easily more than 20 titles--a magazine must distinguish itself from the pack. In seven short years, Meredith Corporation's Traditional Home has done just that. Although Traditional Home outsells its competition on the newsstand and its growing ratebase rivals category leaders, the title's success relies on two key factors. By cannily defining a niche--strongly traditional, with a servicey feel midway between the showcase titles and the how-to magazines--Traditional Home can compete with the category leaders in advertising and circulation. And rather than immediately increase from six times annually, Meredith hopes to build on the Traditional Home brand through spin-off titles Traditional Home Renovation Style and Traditional Home Decorator Showhouse Annual. Says publisher Deborah Jones Barrow, "Wouldn't it be smarter to charge readers a lot, fill the book to the brim with advertising, and lend [the Traditional Home] name to line extensions so that I can repeat this process again?"

Roots on the newsstand

Like many Meredith start-ups, Traditional Home spent its formative years as a news-stand-only special-interest publication, or SIP, of which the Des Moines, Iowa-based company has more than 70. After establishing a strong presence, Traditional Home attracted the attention of corporate executives who decided to convert the annual title to a subscription-based bimonthly. Traditional Home ended its eight-year stint as an SIP selling 300,000 issues annually.

In 1989, the title was launched with a ratebase of 500,000, a starting circulation of 514,814 and a cover price of $2.95. "We had a built-in core audience, and were able to convert them to subscription with blow-in cards and mailings," Barrow says.

After three increases in 1995 alone, the title's current ratebase is 775,000 and the actual circulation is 801,000. The single-copy price increased last year from $3.50 to $3.95, and Barrow says they are testing $4.50 in some markets. While ad pages dipped 1.9 percent, from 470 in 1994 to 461 in 1995, ad revenues have increased 15.9 percent--from $16.9 million in 1994 to $19.6 million last year. Publishers Information Bureau figures indicate that ad pages have more than doubled from the 213 in 1991, and that ad revenues have more than tripled.

Given the title's SIP origins, it's no surprise that, compared with other upscale shelter books, Traditional Home's strongest figures are on the newsstand. It leads the category in single-copy sales, with 246,333, and in percent of total circulation that comprises single-copy sales (30 percent), according to its Audit Bureau of Circulations statement for the six-month period ending December 31, 1995. Conde Nast's Architectural Digest, by contrast, sold 131,240 copies, accounting for 15.7 percent of its total circulation, and Hearst's House Beautiful sold 202,176 single copies, for 20 percent of its total.

"The newsstand buyer is the most committed buyer," says Ron Scott, a consultant based in Derby, Connecticut. "He's paying a price that's too high." Scott believes that single-copy sales that make up 25 to 30 percent of a magazine's total circulation reflect a good balance between newsstand and subscriptions for specialized titles. Traditional Home's sell-through, meanwhile, is in the high 40 percent to low 50 percent range, says Barrow. (A reasonable sell-through is in the 40 percent range, says Scott.)

The rationale behind Meredith's newsstand launch strategy applies to its ratebase as well. "We've had circulation dynamics that would have allowed us to grow faster, but there's another consideration--out-of-pocket abilities of our core advertising group," says Barrow, referring to furniture, fabric and building advertising. "We're doing a good job with nonendemics, but it has to be balanced with a huge helping of [endemics]."

Valerie Muller, executive vice president of New York City-based De Witt Media, says Traditional Home is breaking new ground with cosmetics ads. However, she also points to Traditional Home's bimonthly frequency as a potential hindrance to landing big accounts. "If you miss [with a] a bimonthly, you could miss a whole season."

While Traditional Home's numbers are impressive on the newsstand, they reflect only one measure of success. "Magazines have relative values," says Thomas Losee, publisher of Architectural Digest, the category's advertising leader with 1,209 pages last year. Losee is quick to point out that AD readers pay $5 per issue at the newsstand 12 times a year, compared to TH's cover price of $3.95 six times a year.