• by Larry Dobrow , October 15, 2003

When planning the launch of Western Interiors and Design over the last few years, founder and chief executive officer Carol Decker was keenly aware that the shelter mag landscape was reaching its saturation point. "We saw how many titles, both new and otherwise, were out there," she recalls. "But we thought we saw an opening, a niche that wasn't served."

Famous last words for many a publisher. Turns out, however, that Decker may have been onto something. Restricting itself to the architecture and design of the American West, the bimonthly Western Interiors has made headway within the competitive shelter category since its May debut. It's not exactly Real Simple or even Veranda just yet - its rate base is 150,000 - but Decker hopes to bump that figure to at least 400,000 in the magazine's third year, which would give Western Interiors significantly wider reach than most shelter titles focusing on a specific region.

Without the financial backing of a publishing behemoth, Decker's plans are obviously quite ambitious. Nonetheless, she says response from everybody in the magazine food chain, from advertisers to distributors to readers, has been encouraging. "I was pretty scared we wouldn't be able to find [a distributor] to take us on and that advertisers would want to see a bunch of issues before they took us seriously," Decker concedes. "Turns out that wasn't much of an issue. They recognized the niche." As for readers, she claims they have long been clamoring for "a little bit of that romantic cowboy west" in a shelter magazine. "Everybody loves the American West," she continues. "You go to Europe, they love John Wayne. There are lots of little town or region magazines that do a great job for their market, but this is an international magazine with a regional focus. You can buy it in Sydney."

Her enthusiasm about Australian newsstands aside, Decker realizes that Western Interiors isn't going to survive unless she quickly sells non-endemic advertisers on the mag's merits. The magazine covers homes and home products, so it's no shock that companies like Kravet, Jeld-Wen, California Closets and Kelly-Moore Paints have already come on board. Slightly more surprising is the strong early response from jewelers (David Yurman, Roberto Coin), real-estate developers and high-end travel destinations, both in the west and beyond.

"Luxury goods makes sense for us, because the Tiffanys and Chanels of the world have stores in Aspen and California," Decker says. "With travel and real estate, we know that a lot of people want to own a piece of the west. They're just not sure if they want to go to Montana or Hawaii, or if they want to be on a golf course or on a ranch."

Western Interiors has started to run stories on specific makes and models of cars (a piece on the new Ford GT was the first), though Decker claims that this wasn't done specifically to lure automakers into the mag. "It was more because of the west itself," she shrugs. "In the west, people drive everywhere. They love their cars and their RVs."

It's when she addresses the shelter category as a whole that Decker seems most passionate. What will fuel the success of Western Interiors, she predicts, is that other titles will continue to cover the American West only in passing, leaving the niche wide open for her and her team. "You have to buy ten of the other [shelter] magazines to get ten pages of relevant stories about the west," she says. "We stand alone." To firm up the mag's western foothold, its parent company (Western Interiors & Design, LLC) purchased the annual Western Design Conference earlier this year; it took place late last month in Cody, Wyoming.

Up next for Western Interiors is the usual slate of first-year activities for any magazine: waiting on Audit Bureau of Circulation membership, getting its syndicated data. While Decker touts the demographic desirability of the magazine's readers (she claims that "once you peel off the big business books" the magazine ranks at or near the top in household income, value of home and second-home ownership), she realizes she's not going to be taken 100% seriously until she has the research to back up her assertions. "If you're going after a Kohler or a GM, you want those numbers with you," she acknowledges. "We've had success selling [ads] so far, but once we get the syndicated data we'll have more of a leg to stand on."

The November/December issue of Western Interiors will contain around 45 pages of ads - "all paid," Decker stresses.