The dominance of the weekly market over monthlies has yet to be proven, according to the publisher of Glamour.
The Condé Nast title retained its position at the top of the women’s monthly market as all its competitors suffered year on year declines — despite recent drastic overhauls.
Glamour publisher Simon Pippin said that despite continued growth by Grazia and the launch of IPC’s Look into the market, the true extent of weeklies’ growth in the market could only be measured after their launch period. Emap’s Grazia went up 23.1 per cent year on year to 210,200.
“I will be interested to see in a year’s time where the weeklies will be — you are already seeing signs of the mass market weeklies falling off the perch a bit,†said Pippin. “It will be interesting to see whether Look will maintain growth or falter, or if they will start to feed off each other. There has been a lot of launch activity in the weekly market.
That is bound to drive sales when you are spending £6-7m launching a magazine.
It’s bound to have an effect. The real trick in publishing comes after that money dries up and whether you can maintain it.†Glamour was up by 0.4 per cent to 588,539. Natmags’ Cosmopolitan suffered a small decline of 1.3 per cent year on year to 455,649. IPC’s Marie Claire, which had an extensive redesign last year, was down 9.9 per cent year on year to 334,729.
Grazia publisher Abby Carvosso said: “Speed is of the essence in most of these women’s lives and the reader has probably moved that glossy monthly marketplace into Grazia because it suits her lifestyle. But equally, the premium women’s glossies are performing well.†The other big gain in women’s lifestyle was for Hachette’s Psychologies, a monthly focusing on well-being, which was up 20.2 per cent year on year to 115,398. Publisher Judith Secombe said the figures proved there was a place for a concept about “how you feel not how you lookâ€; an idea critics were sceptical of at its launch in late 2005.
“We’re completely on our own — no one does what we do. The National Readership Survey in mid-December showed that around 80 per cent of our buyers don’t buy other women’s magazines.
We have brought a whole new group of women to the newsstand that wouldn’t traditionally buy a women’s magazine.†Secombe admitted that Pyschologies have proved to be “a polarising brand†where readers either loved or hated it.
The biggest battle had been to get readers past the name. “When people see ‘Psychologies’ they don’t necessarily know what they’re going to get.†Elsewhere, both Natmags’ Company and Emap’s NW (New Woman) were down.
In the mature end of the monthly women’s market, Good Housekeeping remained the top title with circulation of 463,645 — a decline of 1.1 per cent.
Emap’s Yours was down over 9 per cent to 383,577 while IPC’s Woman & Home was down more than 5 per cent to 316,034. Hachette’s Red remained the market leader in the thirtysomething niche with sales of 224, 072, up 2.0 per cent. Condé Nast’s Easy Living — marketed at fortysomethings — also saw an increase in sales year on year by 9.9 per cent year to 200,116.
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