With print magazines increasingly migrating online or even closing outright, Vancouver-based Canada Wide Media is transforming its online lifestyle product BCLiving.ca into a hybrid print/iPad edition that will publish 10 times a year. The company is also introducing a quarterly Chinese-language edition of the publication.
Debuting next month, the print edition of B.C. Living will have a total distribution of 31,000 copies, including 15,000 copies distributed through The Globe and Mail and 11,0000 copies distributed through key newsstand locations.
Tom Gierasimczuk, the former editor-in-chief of Marketing who is now vice-president, editorial of Canada Wide Media, called the new magazine a “multi-platform playbook for how to live the best possible life on the coast.”
B.C. Living will amalgamate the online tent-poles of food, lifestyle, health and fitness, home and décor and arts and entertainment, and is aimed at women in their late 30s and early 40s, said Gierasimczuk.
He said that BCLiving.ca is already the company’s most popular digital product, with 125,000 unique monthly visitors and 500,000 monthly page views. So why go with a print product at all?
“It’s essentially to fill what we feel is a gap in the marketplace,” said Gierasimczuk. “I think there’s a real lack of a 360-degree media lifestyle brand in this space. There are great local public publications, great local blogs, but there’s nobody that offers a higher-end audience.”
Tom Gierasimczuk
Gierasimczuk said the new title aspires to be a mash-up of the U.S. titles New York and the West Coast lifestyle magazine Sunset. While B.C. Living will directly compete with two established TC Media-owned products, Western Living and Vancouver Magazine, Gierasimczuk said it is distinguished by its “robust” digital presence.
Asked if there are enough advertising dollars in the market to support three titles, Gierasimczuk said his publication’s format addresses advertiser demand for more than just print solutions. The title will pursue what he called “multi-platform partnerships” not currently available.
About 25% of the Chinese-language edition will be original content, with the remaining content a translated version of the English edition, said Gierasimczuk. It is aimed at the estimated 400,000 people in the greater Vancouver area that trace their ethnicity to China.
