It takes a bold magazine publisher – and a rookie publisher at that – to turn away advertisers in the current print environment, but that’s exactly what Vancouver’s Shannon Svingen-Jones did with the launch issue of FabUplus, a new quarterly publication catering to plus-sized women.
“I had to turn [some advertisers] away because their imagery wasn’t reflective of the plus-sized community,” said Svingen-Jones. “I didn’t want to put out a plus-size magazine with thin women advertised in it.”
The 68-page launch issue of FabUplus features ads from clients including The Running Room, plus-sized women’s fashion retailer Penningtons and Chef Ann Kirsebom’s Gourmet Sauces.
The new lifestyle magazine is a physical extension of the digital site that Svingen-Jones launched Dec. 1 as the “proof of concept” for an editorial venture catering to North America’s approximately 167 million plus-sized women.
The site currently averages approximately 24,000 unique visitors per month and has 2,300 followers on Facebook. It is also adding approximately 1,000 followers each week on Instagram, where it currently has just over 11,000 followers.
Prior to launching FabUplus’ print edition, Svingen-Jones conducted extensive online research with 2,500 women, asking about their attitudes towards advertising and editorial content.
Among the key findings was the vast majority of respondents (96%) said they would be more likely to purchase products from advertisers presenting a diverse representation of women, including plus-sized women.
Svingen-Jones described FabUplus readers as “vulnerable” and highly sensitive to the idealized – and unrealistic – version of women presented by advertisers and the media.
“When a product comes out that finally represents them, they love it and trust it with all their heart, and that means they’re going to go and buy and believe whatever I put in there.
“I can’t send them somewhere where they’re going to treated disdainfully,” she said.
The print edition of FabUplus debuted in Canada and the U.S. on June 1, with a print run of 20,000 and a cover price of $6.99. In Canada, it is available at Shoppers Drug Mart, Safeway, Sobeys, Walmart, Chapters and Indigo, while its U.S. retail partners are Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million.
So far, social media shares of people posing with the debut issue have come in from all across North America including Yellowknife, Vancouver, Newark, NJ, Greensboro, NC and Georgia, with Svingen-Jones telling Marketing the publication sold 500 copies in the U.S. in its first three days.
The plan is to print quarterly to start, though Svingen-Jones said she hoped to increase FabUplus’ frequency to six times a year beginning in 2017. A full-page, full-colour ad in the publication costs $2,000 for a single insertion, with the inside-front cover costing $2,700 and the back cover costing $3,200.
Publishing represents a radical departure from Svingen-Jones’ professional background in education (she was formerly dean of student affairs at the Art Institute of Vancouver), but she had grown increasingly frustrated with how plus-sized women were depicted – or ignored – in media and popular culture.
“I’m a plus-sized woman, I’m extremely healthy and run 23 kilometres a week, I do triathlons – and I do it all in the body I have,” she said. “I got tired of reading health and fitness magazines that made me feel terrible about who I was because of my size with articles like ‘Lose 10 pounds in 5 days.’
“I was just done with it, and I didn’t think I was the only one, so I created it.”
Asked about the prospects for FabUplus, Svingen-Jones pointed to the success of La Farfa, a Japanese magazine catering to plus-sized women that is credited with popularizing the term “marshmallow girls” to describe that country’s plus-sized women. Launched as a quarterly in 2014, La Farfa sold out its initial press run of 50,000 copies, and now prints bi-monthly with a press run of 100,000.
“You can’t buy that magazine anywhere,” said Svingen-Jones. “People in North America are paying $35 for this magazine on Amazon, and they can’t read it because it’s in Japanese.”
She said the hope for FabUplus was to capitalize on a growing body-positive movement that is sweeping through the U.S. and gradually catching on in Canada, manifesting itself in everything from a plus-sized model gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue to Mattel’s recent makeover of its iconic Barbie doll to reflect real-world women.
Hooray for Ms. Svingen-Jones! She has created a great magazine that fills a badly-underserved niche in North America. I am especially pleased that she actually has advertising standards that raise the bar for the kind of ads she is willing to accept. Most of her potential readers are fed up with being bombarded all their lives with diet ads and fashions shown only on svelte models with whom they cannot identify. I have read her first print issue, and am very impressed with the high quality of the publication!
Thursday, June 09 @ 4:36 pm |