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the Wallpaper folks
High-fashion shopper for the big-$ global set
By Jamie L. Jones
If you have never read Wallpaper, no one would be surprised. The design title, published in Britain, has a tiny circulation by U.S. standards: 130,321.
Yet you've probably heard of Wallpaper, and you have definitely seen evidence of its influence on far larger publications, especially in design.
Wallpaper, owned by Time Inc., is a sleek how-to design title on having the best of the best in life, from Swedish-designed furnishings and gadgets, to Italian coffee, to first-class plane tickets.
It's read by everyone who's anyone in the world of design, and it has also attracted a following among magazine editors for its often startling design and the quality of its editorial.
Now Wallpaper is about to launch a sibling.
On August 30, the five-year-old title will launch a fashion publication, a fashionably ambiguous cross between a consumer and a trade magazine, a catalog and a magazine.
"We're not shy or embarrassed about using the word 'directory'," says Alasdhair Willis, publisher of the Wallpaper group.
An explicit page-by-page directory in each issue will bring fashionistas within credit-card range of the esoteric products pictured in the magazine.
"Project Palmer" is the magazine's official code name, but a fact sheet sent by Wallpaper reveals its real name: Spruce.
Spruce will be a dual-audience, biannual title set to coordinate with the major fall and spring fashion seasons.
The magazine is aimed at the same 30-something international audience that Wallpaper reaches.
Products featured in Spruce will not come straight from Paris and Milan catwalks but from more far-flung sources. Willis says the key word is "discovery."
Anne Urbauer, a German editor from Stern magazine, will serve as the title's executive editor and journalistic conscience. Editors hope that investigative work into little-known designers and new fashion trends will attract as many fashion-industry insiders as private consumers.
The first print-run of the magazine is 260,000, twice Wallpaper's circulation.
In conjunction with the launch of Spruce, Wallpaper will itself go through a redesign to bring it in line with the new fashion title.
But Wallpaper will remain as luxury goods in its own right, even with the new look, at $8 a copy and $67 for a ten-issue subscription.
Wallpaper has only 19,000 subscribers; single copy sales account for more than 85 percent of circulation.
Currently, Wallpaper sells 33 percent of its magazines in the U.S., 30 percent in continental Europe, 27 percent in the U.K., 5 percent in Australia, and 5 percent in the rest of the world.
No one at Wallpaper is apologizing for the price of the magazine.
"No copies are given away. We're very adamant on that," says Willis. "We do pitch ourselves as a luxury product in the publishing world."
And even with the debut of Spruce, Willis says the heart of the enterprise will always be Wallpaper.
"One thing our readers say they don't get enough of is fashion content. We though of upping fashion content in Wallpaper, but we didn't want to alter the main magazine, which is our lifeblood," says Willis.
As for advertising, exclusivity has made Wallpaper succeed in otherwise slow economic times, and Willis hopes it will do the same for Spruce.
"The timing might not be great in terms of the economic slowdown, but the luxury goods brand will support something that's right," says Willis. "Particularly if you have a magazine that looks great and is unashamedly about selling."
Major fashion houses like Prada, Donna Karan and Fendi have signed on for the first issue of Spruce, says Willis. Of the first issue's 348 pages, 158 are ads.
A cozy attitude toward advertisers has served Wallpaper well, and in the past three years, its ad volume has doubled.
Spruce will join the spinoff Line magazine in the Wallpaper stable. Line is a biannual sports and wellness magazine for the Wallpaper crowd.
"It has more to do with the lifestyle of sports than actual physical exertion," says Willis.
August 14, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jamie L. Jones is a staff writer for Media Life.
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