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$895 for WWD site!
But what a site! View a store window in Milan!
By Jeff Bercovici
Talk about an audacious web strategy.
At a time when most publishers are groping their way ever so cautiously towards a sensible online presence, Fairchild Publications is plunging ahead with plans for what promises to be one of the most ambitious subscription sites on the internet.
WWD.com, the site for Fairchild’s flagship fashion industry newspaper Women’s Wear Daily, opens for business on Sept. 10.
Offering an astonishing breadth and depth of features, it aims to be the ultimate resource for anyone who works in the fashion industry.
But so much information comes at a price, and an eye-popping one at that: Individuals will pay $895 for access to the site alone, while $995 includes a subscription to the paper.
That rate seems almost suicidally high, considering how many companies have had trouble getting people to pay even a small fraction of that for online content.
But Rochelle Udell, president of Fairchild’s internet division, predicts that enough of Women’s Wear Daily’s 45,000 print subscribers will pony up to make it worthwhile.
The reason, according to Udell: convenience.
"My whole thing is that people should use information, not spend time finding information," she says.
Though WWD.com’s offerings may seem like a superabundance—everything from the day’s news and gossip to street maps to photo archives going back 50 years—most of it is stuff that a user, be it a head buyer for a retail chain or an assistant to a high-powered designer, would otherwise have to find on his or her own, says Udell.
She points in particular to databases like the Executive Tracker, which provides dossiers on leading figures, and the Rolodex, which has contact information for virtually every important person at every design shop, manufacturer and retailer.
Another timesaver, she says, is the database of benchmarking studies compiled from auditors’ reports. With this feature, an executive at, say, a mid-sized retail chain can measure his own company’s financials up against those of his closest competitors.
For other features, though, the utility is less immediately apparent—for instance, the ability to view, at the click of a mouse, pictures of department store window displays in London and Hong Kong.
But Udell insists that nothing was done just because it was possible.
"I know that, for me, I don’t have time for something I don’t need," she says. "If I put everything through that edit filter as opposed to being self-indulgent, this will work."
Still, WWD.com will have to demonstrate an awful lot of utility if it’s to convince readers to pay close to $1,000 a year for access.
When Inside.com, an entertainment and media trade site, fell far short of its subscription goals, circulation marketing experts cited its $200-plus rate as a major factor.
Women’s Wear Daily readers currently pay between $100 and $165 for their print subscriptions, depending on whether they work in retail or manufacturing or on Wall Street.
Most business-to-business publications offer comparable rates for their online and off-line products, charging at most 10 to 20 percent more for the web site, says Anne Holland, publisher of MarketingSherpa.com.
But Holland notes that $900-$1,000, though expensive for a trade site, is not an unusual price for newsletters, which typically derive little or none of their revenue from advertising.
Like a newsletter, WWD.com won’t have much in the way of ads, though it will sell sponsorships for different parts of the site.
Moreover, Udell points out that WWD.com will offer sizable discounts on group rates for companies purchasing multiple subscriptions for their employees.
At any rate, the site’s high cost should eliminate the worry that large numbers of readers will find WWD.com so adequate to their needs that they will drop their print subscriptions.
Udell says she thinks most of those who sign up for the online version will want to keep the print paper, at least if they resemble her at all in their reading habits.
"Papers are a real grazing experience for me. I hunt online—I gather in a paper."
June 18, 2001
© 2001 Media Life-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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