Cozying Up with a New Glossy

Are you ready to put out the welcome mat for yet another magazine? Time Inc. is about to launch Cottage Living, which will be hitting the newsstands in the next few days. The magazine is focused on the home, but its creators prefer to call it a “women’s lifestyle” publication. “We don’t want to be another pretty shelter title,” said its publisher, Stephen Bohlinger. Editor Eleanor Griffin, who has been developing the magazine for more than three years, agreed. “We aren’t just talking about paint and wallpaper,” she said. “This magazine has a voice – and a soul.”Although the magazine, which is published by Time’s Birmingham, Ala.-based subsidiary, Southern Progress, seems aimed at a niche now dominated by Hearst’s Country Living and Meredith’s Country Home, Ms. Griffin said it has a broader focus and intended audience.But doesn’t the word “cottage” in the title limit its appeal to many urban readers, conjuring the image of small, old-fashioned country houses? Not so, according to Ms. Griffin. “Cottage,” she said, “is a metaphor. To most people it means comfort, simplicity, coziness – just what they want their homes to be like, no matter what size they are or where they are located. It means relaxed living, the way we all want to live today. And, you know you can also have contemporary cottage, traditional cottage … “The magazine’s tagline beneath the logo is, not surprisingly, “Comfort, Simplicity, Style.”Attractively designed and filled with how-to information, “Cottage Living” does feature homes from across the country. But most of them, in fact, are cottages, including one built in the 1930’s in California, a rustic retreat in the Pacific Northwest, and small bright houses in Georgia and Arkansas that are decorated appealingly and affordably. Unlike most shelter books, the magazine is practically a decorator-free zone: The rooms on display really look as if they were pulled together by homeowners who have their own sense of style and shop at stores where we all can shop, such as Target, Anthropologie, and Pottery Barn.There are also many pages devoted to food that include recipes for such down-home comfort favorites as jambalaya and mac and cheese. There is even a feature on Brooklyn-based designer Susan Steinbrock, whose “cottage industry” is creating one-of-a-kind quilts.The second largest launch in Time Inc.’s history, Cottage Living is off to a good start. Its 296 pages include more than 142 pages of advertising. Mr. Bohlinger is upfront about the reason for the magazine’s impressive showing: “We gave our advertisers” – which include Ford, Talbots, Kohler, and GE – “a very good deal. If they bought pages in our first three issues, they could use what they spent toward incremental pages in other Southern Progress publications, which include Southern Living, Cooking Light, Southern Accents, and Health.”Although little known to New Yorkers without Dixie roots, Southern Living is an enormously profitable powerhouse of a magazine, with a readership of 45 million. “Not being in New York, I think, can be an advantage,” said Ms. Griffin, who lives in a Birmingham cottage with a circa 1900 screen door that came from a cottage in New Orleans.Mr. Bohlinger noted that Southern Progress remains a magazine company focused on the reader, always researching what the reader wants and needs. “We knew that ‘cottage’ is a word that women really love. If you put ‘cottage’ in a cover blurb – ‘How to decorate with cottage style’ or ‘How to have a cottage garden,’ it always sold like crazy. Our first subscription efforts went like gangbusters,” he said. The publishers of Cottage Living hope that the magazine will have a circulation of 900,000 in a couple of years.But some of Cottage Living’s competitors are more skeptical. One staffer who works at a “country magazine” said, “We find ‘country’ in the title somewhat limiting. We have spent years trying to tell readers and advertisers that we are not a magazine just for country people. Won’t ‘cottage’ be even more confining?”Country Home was recently spruced up with a new upscale design by New York-based art director Robert Valentine, who designed the first issues of Real Simple. “Advertisers love it,” the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Carol Sheehan, said. Another potential competitor, Rodale’s Organic Style, has also been redesigned for September, and Martha Stewart Living has done the most serious renovating, with Ms. Stewart’s name downsized in the cover logo, and her column, at least for the time being, notably absent.

Cozying Up with a New Glossy

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