The FOLIO: Green Report

efficiency--and sustainability-at the newsstand by Bill Mickey in the circulation and distribution realm, recycle Your Way to Premium space on the newsstand sustainable practices are one part of a dynamic and last fall, a pair of major book retailers—Barnes and notoriously contentious industry-wide effort to imNoble and Hastings Books and Music—announced a proprove the magazine supply chain. Wholesalers and motion to give premium space in nearly 400 of their bookretailers—Wal-Mart primarily—have already begun stores to magazines that use recycled paper. The promotion, dubbed “Green Paper for People and Planet,” included their own aggressive supply chain management iniprominent fixtures and special signage within each store to tiatives. In early February, wholesalers, including Anhighlight publications using recycled paper with at least 30 derson News and Source Interlink, announced a plan percent post-consumer content. to reduce the number of copies shipped to retailers Among the titles included were Shape, Fast Company, Mother Jones, ReadyMade, Nickelodeon, and Body + Soul, by as many as 50 million copies—on top of more than all of which were featured prominently in 153 Hastings Books 100 million copies in recent years. and Music stores—at no charge to publishers. Barnes and Wal-Mart leveraged its retail might in January Noble committed 10 slots for magazines—including Shape, with the announcement that it was cutting over 1,000 Inc., Mother Jones, Mothering, Natural Home, Body + Soul, VegNews, Dwell and Yoga Journal—that use recycled paper magazines from its authorization list. “One of the at a heavily discounted rate ($1,200) in their top 240 stores things that happened to make that shift almost inbeginning in January. evitable was Wal-Mart embarking on a sustainability Maire Walsh, director of client services at Next Steps Marketing, says the benefit for participating magazines is not initiative where they identified specific value chains only a discount on premium rack-space, but an added ecothat needed improvement—and the magazine supply awareness for their titles. “Consumers really want to know chain was one of those,” says Richard Lawton, senior what magazines are using recycled paper,” says Walsh. “It vice president of CoMag. shows that there are magazines in our industry that are embracing recycled paper.” Yet what assists the entire chain in understand“You often hear about recycled paper being poor quality, ing which product and how much of it works best is or that it costs too much and won’t work financially for a pubdata, and in recent years technology has enabled the lishing company,” adds Shape editor-in-chief Valerie Latona. principle players in the chain to get much better at us“If Shape can do it with a 1.7 million circulation size and still be successful and profitable, I’d have to say those excuses ing information to are not valid. There can be no more excuses.” n manage efficiency. What a Waste: maGazines in 2007 Hachette Filipacchi has been par- the supply chain. “We have the ability to—on a spreadDistributed 3,815,270,698 ticularly successful at sheet, anyway—see how we can be more efficient at meetReturned 2,373,098,374 draw optimization by ing customer demand. But we’re bumping up against sysSold 1,442,172,324 using data analysis. In temic constraints that hinder further improvement,” says Sell through 37.80% the past, the company Lawton. “Those things can be rate base pressure, where a SOURCE: New Single Copy’s Magazine has succeeded in cutting 28 percent sell through for one title makes sense to the pubRetail Sales Experience an estimated 10 percent lisher, but it doesn’t make sense for a wholesaler or retailer. of copies from the system while increasing sales by half a There are misaligned economics for the different organizapoint. “It’s a matter of getting the right product into the tions in the supply chain.” right place at the right time,” says Will Michalopoulos, vice president, retail sales and marketing for Hachette. taKeaWays Data can also be used to look at store-by-store demoGreen publishing standards: Optimize draw graphics to see how title mix can be adjusted according to by at least 30 percent to reduce inefficient disthe customers that shop there. “It’s finding that delicate tribution. balance between putting in the right number of copies so What you Can Do to be Green: Fully exploit that you’re not wasting any, but you’re not running it so your access to store-level data. Create new fortight that you have an opportunity cost of lost sale due to mulas to direct copies to your best performing sell-out,” says Lawton. stores, while trimming draw at your bottom-tier Additionally, systemic issues also need to be examined, stores. principally rate base, which has taken heat as an not only resources: MPA’s Sustainability and Magazines an archaic media metric, but one that hinders efficiency at seminar series; International Periodical Distributhe newsstand. Pressure to deliver the minimum number tors Association of copies guaranteed to advertisers encourages flooding Folio: October 2008 | foliomag.com http://www.foliomag.com

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