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Women's Running Slims Focus To Fill Niche

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By MARY SHEDDEN

@tampatrib.com

Published: January 14, 2009

Updated: 01/14/2009 11:44 am

In today's unstable economic environment, you won't find many businesses willing to redefine their brand and narrow the niche of potential customers.

But that's exactly what St. Petersburg publisher Dawna Stone did this month, when she abandoned Her Sports + Fitness to focus solely on a magazine dedicated to women and running.

"We're narrowing to grow," she says of Women's Running, which debuted with a January-February issue. "We're not trying to be all things to all people."

Stone, who has a degree in finance and had an existing circulation of 85,000 with the old publication, says the move was a well-researched risk she and husband, Matt Dieter, were willing to take. Dieter is president of Wet Dog Media, the company that owns Women's Running.

Reader surveys showed 90 percent of the existing readers were runners, she says. Their best fan response came at running event expos. And advertisers were receptive to the narrower, but still lucrative, running market. The bimonthly publication is available by subscription or at retail outlets such as Barnes & Noble and Borders for $4.99.

Stone says Women's Running already has surpassed the old magazine's circulation numbers and is close to 90,000 for its first issue. A big boost came from retailers that increased their regular orders once the new name was announced. Companies such as Under Armor responded to the rebranding with new advertising.

The genre's magazine giants, such as Runner's World, speak to a coed audience that includes professional and elite runners, as well as beginners. But only about half of its roughly 600,000 readers are women, says Steven Cohn, editor of the Media Insider Newsletter.

Stone says she likes that she can offer narrower coverage than coed magazines can, whether it is with running shoe reviews or nutritional tips for women only. She says she's looking to fill a niche somewhere between the weight-loss tips in mainstream women's fitness magazines and in-depth analysis of how world-class runners are improving their split times.

"Women care about their finishing time and not anybody else's," she says.

Cohn says participatory health and fitness magazines, such as the 1-million circulation magazine Self, are immensely popular because they offer women something they can use. Female readers are less interested in elite athletes, which is why magazines such as Sports Illustrated for Women have folded.

"Magazines like Self and Shape have done very well in the marketplace," Cohn says. "Both sexes, men and women, are real interested in looking good, so a niche publication like Women's Running might just work."

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