15 Feb 10

Stylist first ABC result

by Lee Dick, Planner/Buyer

Stylist, the weekly free woman’s magazine which hit the streets of London, Manchester, Leeds, Brighton, Glasgow and Birmingham on 7 October, has reported its first ABC figure of 410,674 copies. 10k more copies than the 400k figure forecast at launch and making it the 5th highest circulating title in the women’s glossy market.

The sister title of ShortList is also available to pick up in branches of French Connection and selected airport lounges and was touted as a rival to weekly fashion mag Grazia. Both titles have a similar target audience, however prior to Stylist’s launch a Grazia spokeswoman said ‘there is an enormous difference in reader engagement between a magazine which people are prepared to actively seek out and pay £1.95, and one that is a five-minute flick through for free. The acid test for a free product such as Stylist will be whether it can secure luxury fashion advertising’. Well the smile might have slipped from her face when she opened the launch issue of Stylist to find adverts from companies such as Yves Saint Laurent, Selfridges and Burberry. The high quality advertising has continued and the magazine has even carried a number of cover wraps in its first few months of existence. And as for the spokeswoman’s comment about people seeking out paid for magazines, it’s safe to say that fans of Stylist will seek out their closest distributer and make collecting a copy a part of their Wednesday morning routine.

Grazia itself saw a 1.1% yoy increase in circulation so it clearly hasn’t been affected too much by the launch of Stylist into the woman’s sector.

There is always the danger with a publication such as this to be very London-centric, but I’m happy to report that Stylist doesn’t go down that route. There are always details of bars, restaurants and events in cities outside the big smoke, including a few in Scotland.

As someone who sits squarely in their 20-40 year-old ABC1 woman target audience, I have to say I love it! The mix of designer and high street fashion is perfect, and the spreads are as beautiful as anything you would see in Grazia or Vogue, even if they aren’t printed on the same glossy paper. It’s much heavier editorially than its big brother ShortList, with a range of quirky snippets, in-depth features, interviews and regular columnists. However I found the magazine’s website rather disappointing. I’m not quite sure what I expected from it, maybe an extension of the offline offering, but I certainly didn’t expect to see just an online copy of the latest issue and nothing else.

My only real gripe with the magazine is that it isn’t more readily available in Scotland and other more far-flung parts of the UK, and this has obvious implications for advertisers looking for coverage beyond the major conurbations.