Fashion 18 leads readers online

TORONTO–St. Josephs’ 85,000-circ teen shopping title has launched a digital edition of its print product in an attempt to introduce teen girls to online magazines. The numbers suggest it’s working.

Fashion 18 publisher Sarah Bull said that after a year of planning, she was surprised by how easy it was to get the online edition off the ground.

“In terms of up-front costs, there was the (purchase of) technology, but other than that there wasn’t much,” Bull said.

This is due, she said, to their editorial model. Of the six annual online issues, four will be online copies of the print product, which require no additional content creation or photography. The remaining two will be “vertical spin-offs” with unique content.

The first of these unique editions is being planned for fall release and will focus on denim fashion. The second, tentatively planned as a Best of 2006 issue, will see unique content alongside repurposed articles from throughout the year.

This editorial model of two unique issues and four clone issues was designed in response to market testing done amongst 4,000 girls in the target age range.

“The first question we asked was ‘are you familiar with a digital edition?’ The majority of them were not,” Bull said. The digital clones are meant to “introduce the digital platform to teen girls and to our advertisers, and to use this year to show them how it works.”

Bull credits Texterity, the software company that facilitated the digital conversion, with making the transition so smooth. The magazine chose Texterity’s software over competitor Zinio because Texterity loads the magazine through the reader’s web browser – no additional software needs to be downloaded to view content.

“The teens told us their parents don’t let them download.”

Bull said her readership has increased since the digital magazine launched. By the end of May, unique page views had increased to 75,000 from 40,000 in January.

Reprinted from Masthead Canada June 21, 2006. Copyright © 2006 Masthead Canada. All Rights Reserved.