Magazine Pins Hopes on Women in Business
Role models are more important to women than to men. Personalities and life styles are more interesting to women than to men. Men are more practical, women more romantic.
Although they may sound like sexist stereotypes, these conclusions are part of the marketing strategy for a new Irvine-based magazine whose overall orientation is anything but chauvinist. Entrepreneurial Woman, which hit the newsstands Tuesday, is in fact also based on the premise that women will soon be running half of all businesses in the United States and form an affluent and fast-growing market for a new publication.
And the publishers of Entrepreneurial Woman, who also publish Entrepreneur, believe this market isn’t being addressed by either the myriad women’s magazines or the mainstream business magazines.
“There aren’t any direct competitors,” Publisher Clare N. Thain said. “There are some out there--Working Woman, Working Mother, Savvy Woman--but they tend to be more oriented to the corporate businesswoman. Ours is a niche book.”
Thain said this niche already contains 3 million to 4 million female small-business owners, and he cited U.S. Small Business Administration figures showing that more than half of all new businesses today are started by women. Initially, Entrepreneurial Woman will aim to reach 200,000 of them, half through subscriptions and half through newsstand sales.
One key question is whether women really want anything different from men in a business magazine. Editor Rieva Lesonsky, who like most of the 86 employees at Entrepreneur will do double duty with both magazines, said Entrepreneurial Woman will differ from its older sibling by focusing more on personalities.
“Women don’t have as many role models as men,” she said. “They want to hear about who is doing these things, as well as what they’re doing.”
Thane added that “men tend to be more oriented towards the how-to,” while women have “stronger emotional ties” to people-oriented activities, such as networking groups. These conclusions, he said, came from focus groups and discussions with organizations such as the National Assn. of Women Business Owners.
Judith Daniels, a New York magazine consultant and founder of Savvy Woman magazine, agreed that women’s concerns generally are neglected by mainstream business magazines such as Business Week, Fortune, Forbes and Inc. “If you’re a woman, you like to see your work life addressed, and you just don’t see it in the business press,” she said.
Daniels added, however, that most women’s magazines now recognize that their readers are working, and they make an effort to address those concerns. She noted that even life style magazines such as Glamour, for which she is a contributing editor, now contain articles about the working world.
Savvy Woman and Working Woman, moreover, are well-established magazines with large circulations. Working Woman alone has a circulation of nearly 1 million, outstripping even the major business magazines.
But Lesonsky claimed that these publications are strictly aimed at the corporate
and professional women, not entrepreneurs.
“Working Woman gives maybe six pages out of 130” to women who own their own businesses, she said. “I don’t consider it a competitor.”
From an advertiser’s point of view, though, professional women are an attractive, affluent market. Entrepreneurial Woman still must persuade people that its readership is made up of established businesswomen and not struggling would-be entrepreneurs.
A heavy presence of ads from franchise operators, mail-order houses and little-known companies promoting “get-rich-quick” schemes has long characterized Entrepreneur, and the premier issue of Entrepreneurial Woman appears to follow that pattern. Such ads might bring in revenue, but they don’t impress more desirable national advertisers such as automobile, computer and luxury goods companies.
Still, Entrepreneurial Woman has some strong advantages starting out, not the least of which is the existing infrastructure of Entrepreneur. Company Chairman Peter Shea said just eight people are dedicated solely to the new publication, with the rest of the staff coming from Entrepreneur. Similarly, the new magazine will be able to call on many of the same advertisers and generally take advantage of the network of contacts already built by Entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurial Woman also had a very strong response to its May pilot issue, Shea said. Of the 100,000 people who received the pilot, 12,000 responded either to a subscription request or a survey. Shea called that response “phenomenal.”
The launch costs for the new magazine have been kept to $1.5 million, Shea said, and profits are expected in the first year. Making money that quickly would be highly unusual for a new magazine.
The first issue of Entrepreneurial Woman contains 128 pages--a roughly 50-50 mix of editorial and advertising--and features a cover profile of Rachel Perry, who built a $10-million skin-care company. Shorter columns bear titles such as “Management Smarts,” “Family Matters” and “Role Model.”
Daniels, the New York magazine consultant, said she hadn’t seen a copy of Entrepreneurial Woman but said the response to the pilot issue sounded “incredible.” And though she is generally skeptical about the prospects for any start-up magazine--the great majority of them fail--she agreed that Entrepreneurial Woman may have found a niche.
“It’s another slice of a slice of a slice of the pie,” Daniels said. “The largest category of circulation is women’s magazines, and it’s always in flux.
WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS
Small Businesses owned by women. In millions:
Total Women-owned % of businesses businesses total 1977 11.6 2.6 23% 1982 12.8 3.3 26% 1984 15.9 4.6 29% 1988 18.9 7.2 38% 2000* 30.0 15.0 50%
*Estimate Sources: IRS, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Small Business Administration MAGAZINE MARKET Total circulation for six month ending Dec. 31, 1989. Black Enterprise*: 233,458 Business Week**: 889,535 Elle: 826,336 Entrepreneurial Woman***: 200,000 Fortune: 668,972 Inc.: 630,203 Savvy Woman: 456,712 Working Mother: 538,072 Working Woman*: 903,704 * Six months ending June 30, 1989. ** North America only *** Guaranteed six-month circulation for advertisers.
