Orange Coast Seeks Circulation Gain : Magazine to Add Business Supplement
Orange County--already one of the most crowded markets in the country for business publications--will have yet another source of financial news when Orange Coast Magazine starts distributing a 32-page business supplement in July.
The supplement is part of an ambitious expansion plan by Costa Mesa-based Orange Coast, which hopes to see readership swell from 35,000 to 50,000 within 18 months.
With the new entrant, Orange County will have almost a dozen business-oriented publications. The list includes newsletters, general circulation papers and specialized business publications.
Orange Coast’s publisher, Ruth Ko, said the slick, upscale monthly is responding to “calls we get daily from people wanting to give us stories.” Although no marketing studies have been done, she said the supplement, which will appear each month, evolved because “we’re listening to the trend of what’s going on.”
Ko said the new supplement has an edge because Orange Coast, a 13-year-old regional magazine, already is ongoing and profitable. Orange Coast’s content--heavy on such features as stories about shyness and blind dates--will mix well with more serious, business-oriented news, according to Ko.
“It gives you the trivial on one hand, and, if you want to read about the stock market (too), it’s all in one publication,” she said. “I can see business women reading about fashions and then glancing at a story about how to get good management courses.”
The section will be sandwiched inside Orange Coast and probably designated by specially colored corners. The first issue will be on newsstands by June 25. It will have a profile of Carl Karcher, chief executive of Anaheim-based Carl Karcher Enterprises, plus sections on management and statistics, and a regular investment column by a financial author, John Pugsley.
To help ensure readership, Orange Coast is investing $30,000 to send 10,000 free copies of its July issue to medium-size businesses in Orange County. Another $30,000 is being spent on a media and direct mail campaign, Ko said.
Nonetheless, executives of two monthlies with Orange County origins--Business to Business and Executive magazines--said Friday that they are not worried about more competition for advertisers’ dollars.
“It’s a rough world out there . . . but we’ve got a special niche” with different editions in San Francisco, Sacramento and Southern California, said Margaret Stevens, editor-in-chief of Executive Magazine, which has 35,000 readers. The sales manager for Business to Business, Kurt Zimmerman, said that the Irvine-based magazine’s 30,000 circulation also is not threatened: “We’re different (because) we’re a whole magazine put together for business people,” he said.
A third monthly business magazine in Orange County, Liberty Street Chronicle, went out of business last year.
