• by John Gaffney , January 13, 2003

It’s a magazine space crowded with publishing’s elite. Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, House and Garden to name a few. But at the top of the list these days, according to Meredith Publishing data, Traditional Home has found a home. TradHome will increase its rate base to 925,000 effective with the February/March 2003 issue. This increase marks the 13th rate base increase for Traditional Home in the last 13 years and the third increase this year. It had previously increased from 825,000 to 850,000 with the June/July 2002 issue. Under group publisher Joe Lagani’s guidance, Traditional Home experienced a 19% increase in advertising pages over the previous year with 772.52 total advertising pages, the largest increase in the category. We caught up with Lagani to get his view of the upscale magazine marketplace.

MediaPost: What do you think has made the upscale home decorating and improvement marketplace more solid than other categories in this economy?

Joe Lagani: Outside of economic factors, we know that magazines work when consumers need a lot of information from them. And the Traditional Home reader keeps showing that to increasing degrees. They show it on their other actions too. Lowe’s Home Improvements stores are doing well. Home Depot continues to do great business. With interest rates low we’re going to be okay because the housing market will move. And even if they don’t we’re still ok, because people will improve what they already own.

MP: There have been a lot of different personalities in this category. Martha Stewart and Bob Vila just to name two. Meredith has not gone in that direction. Why?

JL: Because we believe magazines are driven by content not by a single personality. We identified Traditional Home as a magazine that would develop its own personality. We wanted it to become part of the fabric of Americana. There was a lot of risk obviously to tie any part of that to a personality.

MP: From a business and content perspective, how did you grow your circulation so steadily?

JL: This market is huge. It’s much bigger than the 925,000 we’ve grown to. Affluence is still out there. I think what we did that really appealed to readers is we made affluence accessible. A lot of our competitors are obsessed with the big designers. We include them but not tom the point that everything in the book is out of reach to our readers. It’s really not a lot more complicated than that. Do you want your magazine to interest 12 designers? Or do want to bring those designers to an audience.

MP: Outside of circ numbers how do you know you’re hitting the mark with readers?

JL: We hold focus groups frequently, but more importantly we do a lot of field editorial research. Our editors travel shows and exhibitions all over the country. In fact we have some edit staff based in Des Moines, IA. I like that. We’re not totally New York-centric.