Bryan Douglas-Dala has probably heard the question many times but it’s cheerfully answered: how come Candis sells over 300,000 copies a month and hardly anyone has heard of it?
“We had done very little PR until recently when our donations to charity reached £50 million,” says the marketing director of Newhall Publications, which publishes the women’s and health monthly.
These are remarkable numbers. ABC figures for January to June 2006 show sales of 301,114, making the handbag-sized glossy the eighth best selling women’s monthly in the country.
As for the £50 million, that’s the amount donated to health-related charities since 1962 when Newhall’s predecessor, Pembroke Promotions, launched a pool coupon to raise money for cancer and polio research.
One reason for this low profile is that although Candis shares the same high-quality editorial and production values as the other best-selling women’s monthlies – the likes of Marie Claire and Woman & Home - it is sold only through subscription. Another is that it isn’t produced in London but in offices opposite a farm in Hoylake, Wirral.
Douglas-Dala believes its location gives Newhall advantages – although they are hard to define. “Its difficult to describe but we can produce the magazine at a different pace. The physical space gives us the chance to be more creative.”
Joseph Douglas had lost friends and family to cancer when Pembroke Promotions launched the pools coupon in 1962 to raise money for the Cancer and Polio Research Fund. In the 1970s he set up a newsletter to inform customers of the work of the fund and Douglas was awarded an OBE for his services to medical charities. By 1985 the newsletter had grown to a 28-page magazine, and a free prize draw, promoted by the newly formed Newhall Publications replaced the pools coupon. A year later readers voted and chose the name Candis for the magazine. In the late 1990s it adopted a 124-page full colour format and in July 2006 it ditched the old hand delivery system for the magazine and replaced it with speedier postal fulfilment.
Ten per cent of income from magazine subscriptions goes to charity, with the £50 million donation mark reached last year. Subscribers also become members of the Candis Club, giving them access to a range of benefits such as free accidental death insurance, savings on electrical goods and car servicing offers.
But Douglas-Dala is emphatic that this is not a charity with a magazine added on, nor a members’ club with a glossy brochure. “We are a publishing company,” says the member of the family that still controls Newhall. “That’s the number one thing.”
From a total headcount of 160 staff, there’s a modest editorial team of eight, producing a magazine with a cover price of £3. But it’s headed by editor Jenny Campbell, who has worked in the past for Prima and Vogue. She has brought in highly regarded contributors, including Virginia Ironside and Polly Toynbee. Nigella Lawson, Sting and Halle Berry have been featured in recent years, while actress Samantha Janus is on the cover of the March 2007 issue, which also contains articles on why men hate going to their GP and how Crimestoppers is trying to track down absconding paedophiles.
Among the large, 120-strong salesforce are around 50 self-employed consultants. Douglas-Dala says the salesforce has grown up with the business and had focused mainly on door-to-door sales, reflecting the company’s roots in the pools business.
But it’s been increasingly difficult to recruit the Candis type of sales exec – ones who can sign up to a five-point code of practice and are “well versed in finding sustainable subscribers”, according to Douglas-Dala – and in the last four years the focus has switched to promoting the magazine from stands in shopping centres. In the past 12 months that’s snowballed,” says Douglas-Dala. “Now 80 per cent of our business comes from shopping centres.
“People are inquisitive about the magazine. We are not nabbing people like the credit card companies.” Just as the Hoylake location gives the company space to produce the magazine creatively, so its subscription-only approach protects it from the vagaries of competing on the racks of the newsagents and supermarkets. That means no pressure for endless cover freebies.
Bryan Douglas-Dala
“We are not influenced by the retailers and that’s a good thing. We don’t have Tesco breathing down our neck. “And as a family-owned company we are able to take the long-term view. It’s not all about month-on-month sales – although they are important.”
That allows him a relatively sanguine view of the competition. “We are in competition for people’s free time. When they sit down in their free time I want them to be reading Candis. “We hope we are giving them that little bit extra but through membership of the club they also have the feeling of getting something back.”
Over its history, the company has given the Cancer and Polio Research Fund £31.5 million, over £4.3 million to the National Asthma Campaign and £3.3 million to Macmillan Cancer Relief. But in the past four years it has broadened its scope to fund smaller-scale community projects aimed at improving people’s lives.
Readers can nominate projects they feel worthy of funding and Douglas-Dala believes that Candis has tapped into a renewed sense of pride in communities across the country. “We have been a little bit ahead of the game in this and we intend to stay that way.” The donations come before profits are calculated.
Newhall’s financial record over the past few years has varied from a loss to a profit (£1 million) on turnover this year forecast to be around £10 million. Douglas-Dala says the company will make a loss of circa £250,000 this year as profitability has been hit by spending on shopping centre marketing – investment he believes will show its worth in coming years. The loss is still separate from the company’s £800,000 donation to charity this year.
Douglas-Dala is open-minded about the future. “In ten years’ time will we have only one site? Who knows?” The website is currently being developed to give additional content to members and Newhall is looking to recruit a new website marketing manager. It is also hoping to announce in the next few weeks a replacement for Campbell, who is retiring to live in France.
Candidates will need extensive publishing experience and the salary on offer is around £60,000. That could be the cue for another editor to make the journey from London to Hoylake.
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