|
| Each issue contains 'favorite beauty products, hair products and accessories used by celebrities; an insider's look on how to achieve your favorite celebrity's hair and make up style,' as well as new music and movie releases 'that inspire real-life looks'
|
for young girls and their mops
TeenStyle primps for a January launch
By Lorraine Calvacca
Teenagers--read girls--appear to have pretty much all they need in the current crop of youth magazines, or so it would seem.
Traditional titles such as Teen, Seventeen and YM have been joined by relatively recent entrants including Cosmogirl!, Latingirl, Girl, TeenPeople, Jump and Twist, all of which offer--to varying degrees--celebrity gazing, beauty and fashion tips, diet, nutrition and sex talk, advice for the hormonally confused, and sometimes inspirational fare with a trendy accent on "real" people and subjects.
But wait! There is something missing--or at least in short supply, and that's hair, says Sara Fiedelholtz, publishing director of H&S Media.
Accordingly, H&S is launching a hirsute bimonthly, TeenStyle, in early January.
Fiedelholtz says teen readers want more coverage of hair, citing an internet survey of 500 girls conducted by the 9-year-old newsstand-driven company based in Bannockburn, Ill.
Teens, when asked what would head the list of topics if they were creating a magazine, responded thusly: hair, beauty, celebrities and shopping for your body type.
This is apparently not an off-the-top-of the-head idea; Fiedelholtz has roots in the teen market as the former special projects director at Emap Petersen's Teen and founder of her own media consulting and brand development firm specializing in the teen market.
Fiedelholtz says that while general-interest titles like YM, Teen and Seventeen do run some follicularly-focused features, their offerings are just a tease. TeenStyle promises to devote 53 percent of editorial per issue to the care and feeding of readers' locks, while H&S promotional material claims that Seventeen has 15 percent beauty coverage including hair and Teen has 12 percent. TeenStyle parts from the crowd, says Fiedelholtz, because it breaks out hair and beauty into full-blown separate categories.
The book will typically deliver editorial in the areas of fashion, accessories and movies and entertainment-all filtered through the starry, starry celebrity lens. Each issue contains "favorite beauty products, hair products and accessories used by celebrities; an insider's look on how to achieve your favorite celebrity's hair and make up style," as well as new music and movie releases "that inspire real-life looks."
To help spur newsstand sales, every issue will bear some kind of tip-on such as hair-pins, hair tattoos, tattoo bracelets, and beaded necklaces. (Retail outlets include Blockbuster Video, Sam Goody, Rite Aid, K-Mart, KB-Toys and Transworld/Camelot record stores.)
The 172-page premiere double-issue carries just 30 ad pages, including Colombia and Epic records, prom dress manufacturers, some dot.coms and "smaller hair accessory" advertisers. A full-page black-and-white one-time ad is $2,550; a full-page one-time color ad is $5,800.
"I'd love to break more traditional fashion and beauty names like Tommy Hilfiger, Revlon and Guess," muses Fiedelholtz.
So far, the competition doesn't appear to be worried.
"Hair is important," agrees Seventeen executive editor Roberta Caploe, citing a feature in its June issue entitled "101 Best Hair Cuts."
"But we think girls are interested in a lot more than outward appearances.They want to hear about lots of different things. The magazine is selling the reader short--no pun intended."
Caploe acknowledges that almost any category can accommodate a startup that is unique in conception and expert in execution, but "TeenStyle doesn't sound like anything different. And the competition is so stiff that that's what really matters."
But Fiedelholtz says her new title won't be a direct competitor to existing category leaders.
"We are not a replacement buy," stresses Fiedelholtz. "We're an add-on buy, a how-to book to use as a reference," noting that TeenStyle competes with titles like Hair Sophisticate, not general interest books.
Still, she hopes to see the magazine placed with the teen titles, where it will certainly have much better odds of selling.
Newsstand guru Dan Capell notes that the teen category does very well on the racks, which is an immediate plus for the launch of TeenStyle . And while he can't, of course, predict how browsers will respond, he believes the logo's familiar ring may have a gravitational effect.
"So what is that, like People and InStyle combined?" he laughed upon first hearing the name TeenStyle. The aura it radiates, he says, "couldn't hurt."
-Lorraine Calvacca covers magazines for Media Life.