Mr. Magazine

Quick&Simple, Good Housekeeping’s women’s weekly was launched two years ago to be only the second women’s service weekly magazine on the market place and to compete directly with Bauer’s Woman’s World, the first women’s weekly that started the Bauer empire in the United States back in 1980. Compared to the magazine field worldwide, the American market has the least number of women’s service weekly magazines. In fact Bauer ruled that field (and continues to rule it) for more than 25 years without any competition. Bauer is also credited by revitalizing the newsstands through paying complete attention to the newsstands and introducing different promotional gimmicks like the In Touch Weekly “thank you issue for 25 cents”, and the introduction of additional weekly titles such as Life&Style Weekly and the soon to be published Cocktail Weekly. Hearst, Quick&Simple’s publisher took a page from Bauer by first, launching Quick&Simple to compete with Woman’s World, second Hearst is doing the same with the magazine’s cover prices strategy. They charged 25 cents for the first issue of Quick&Simple, then they priced the magazine at $1.49, same as Woman’s World current cover price, and later they increased it to $1.59, and this week Hearst dropped the price to 25 cents for its Easter (April 10) issue. Didn’t someone once said that imitation is the best form of flattery! The six million dollar question now is whether Hearst will ever think of launching a celebrity weekly to compete with the rest of the Bauer lines of weeklies? Let us wait and see.