Mr. Magazine

“There is a digital research company called Kantar Millward Brown and we do a lot of convergent partnerships with our partners HGTV and we obviously do a lot of research to see how a campaign does and whenever print was added into the mix, everything went up. Likelihood to buy went up; preference for the brand went up. It happens so often that I literally said to the director who was running this digital research company, I keep noticing that print keeps raising the numbers. And he said that was always true. And I’ve always felt this way, but it continues to be proven by the research. Print adds a lot to the formula.” Vicki Wellington…

“I sometimes take the magazine home and look at it in home-lighting because I know that’s how people are going to look at it, not in an office setting with calibrated fluorescent lights. They’re going to probably have a 60-watt bulb in their lamp. So I ask myself, can you see the type? Can you read it okay? Things like that are fun for me when making the magazine. So, print matters because it makes the experience of seeing a story special.” Sara Peterson…

HGTV Magazine will be celebrating its 10^th birthday this year in October. But the magazine is taking a celebratory stance in every issue, according to its Chief Revenue Officer Vicki Wellington. It’s doing so by celebrating phenomenal subscription sales, renewals and newsstand numbers, and by, according to Editor in Chief Sara Peterson, providing the value of insider advice from trusted experts, as well as the enjoyment of taking a look inside real people’s homes with its “decorating truths” and upbeat, friendly content. Even during a pandemic, HGTV Magazine seeks to bring light-hearted and useful content to its loyal readers. And for that colorful continuity, I’m sure we’re all very thankful.

I spoke with Vicki and Sara recently about the 10^th birthday and all their celebratory plans for this powerhouse brand. And about the special issue that will showcase why the magazine’s longevity was never in question. It’s a fun interview with two people who have a mutual respect and camaraderie that shines through in their conversation. A conversation that covers the earlier, darker days of the pandemic, yet shows the hope and determination of people who never gave up on their mission: to provide service journalism as heartily and enjoyably as possible, without forgetting what the entire world was going through and showing that compassion accordingly.

So, please enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Vicki Wellington, Senior Vice President, Group Publishing Director & Chief Revenue Officer, and Sara Peterson, Editor in Chief, HGTV Magazine.

But first the sound-bites:

On how HGTV Magazine is doing during the changes the pandemic brought (Sara Peterson): We’ve always been “change is good” type of people, so we’re good at adapting and keeping on going; it’s so nice to look back on the year of the pandemic, to look back instead of just being in the midst of it. Whenever things are challenging or tough, either in your personal life or in the world in general, I always like to focus on the work and the great distraction and fun of making a magazine. That didn’t change.

On whether the business side of selling is easy to do virtually (Vicki Wellington): It is totally different. But I will say this, one thing that’s positive is now our meetings are super-tight and condensed. So, where we might have had an hour with an advertiser or a client, now it’s much less time but it’s great because we focus in on what we want to talk about. So remarkably, it’s really been fine. We’ve gotten clients on the phone; everybody is open for meetings. I’m amazed with all that’s gone on, HGTV Magazine is having a great year.

On HGTV Magazine being one of the few magazines that did not cut its print frequency during the pandemic (Vicki Wellington): And still has a nice variety of advertisers. Fifty percent are “home” advertisers, but fifty percent are still other things. We get a lot of food, a lot of business and finance. If you’re on Zoom constantly, you love when the magazine arrives and you get to sit back, relax and enjoy it. And in this case, really do something with it. Shop from it and create a new world for yourself inside. And I think business has reflected that as hard as it’s been.

On creating “fun” during the dark days of the pandemic (Sara Peterson): Well, you have fun momentum. You are this brand and I have a lot of adjectives that I can substitute for fun: positive outlook, upbeat, friendly, colorful; that attitude and personality. And the conversational copy that we have in the magazine. I think those are ways that we deliver “fun.”

On Vicki Wellington being the chief revenue officer for both HGTV Magazine and the Food Network Magazine (Vicki Wellington): Yes, I’m a lucky girl, Samir. Who’s luckier than me? I mean, Food Network and HGTV are gigantic global brands. It’s awesome and I love it. And I haven’t been here with Sara for the whole 10 years, I came in about a year and a half ago. So she and her team deserve the credit much more than I do. I’m actually the pandemic publisher for HGTV Magazine. I’m just very lucky to be here.

On the plans for celebrating the magazine’s 10^th birthday (Sara Peterson): This was a lot of planning. You can imagine. All the thinking about how you’re going to make this issue special. You only get one 10th birthday to do. I’ve always loved the fact that in magazines, you always get another issue, so you always have another take to do that story you wanted or another cover idea, but the feeling of having a birthday issue, the 10th birthday, and we did have a fifth birthday issue, but 10 is bigger. So the pressure was on, but also the opportunities were there. How were we going to celebrate ourselves and all we’ve done. but also still deliver new ideas and new content in the magazine, not just do a look-back?

On the role print plays in this digital age (Vicki Wellington): People want less time on the computer and we can prove it. Right now our subscriptions are up. They’re purchased digitally, but they’re print subscriptions. Just as an example, our renewals are up. HGTV Magazine happens to have one of the highest renewal rates in the company. And that’s between $30 and $45, so that’s a lot of money as you know for a magazine subscription.

On anything either of them would like to add (Vicki Wellington): Just that HGTV Magazine is having a very strong year. I think the product continues to serve a purpose, part of a major power brand. It’s nice to have such a powerful brand that’s so well-recognized and loved. And it’s safe; it’s not about the pandemic; it’s not about politics. And I think advertising has backed all that up in every category. All my vital signs are good. Subscriptions are good; newsstand is good; renewals are good; advertising is good. Those are all the positives.

On what keeps them up at night (Vicki Wellington): After going through a pandemic, you know what, I don’t worry as much. It really put things into perspective. What am I worrying about? Once we’ve gotten through this crazy time and we don’t have to worry about just going out of our houses or going out without gloves. So honestly for me, I don’t worry about a lot because we’ve lived through this crazy time. The minor things at this point would be just doing a good job and getting my work done.

On what keeps them up at night (Sara Peterson): I find myself thinking how much better I’m sleeping lately. There were times in 2020 where many nights I was wide awake between 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. I would think about people I missed, work, things I needed to do, was my Amazon order going to arrive on time. Did I get the groceries delivered or should I go there? Should I buy more masks and which masks, that sort of stuff. And having that tone down a little, the anxiety level, that hopefully we’ve all lowered some anxiety, sleeping better and also knowing there’s a plan now for the immediate future, has helped.

And now the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ interview with Vicki Wellington, Senior Vice President, Group Publishing Director & Chief Revenue Officer, and Sara Peterson, Editor in Chief, HGTV Magazine. 

Samir Husni: Change is the only constant in the magazine media business, and with everything that has happened within the last year, between the pandemic and the unrest the country has seen, change has been paramount. So, with those changes, how are things going at HGTV Magazine?

Sara Peterson: We’ve always been “change is good” type of people, so we’re good at adapting and keeping on going; it’s so nice to look back on the year of the pandemic, to look back instead of just being in the midst of it. Whenever things are challenging or tough, either in your personal life or in the world in general, I always like to focus on the work and the great distraction and fun of making a magazine. That didn’t change. 

We still had readers that expected a magazine on the newsstand, in the mailbox, and that was like a comfort; it’s always a comfort, but especially in times of enormous change and unknowns. And that’s a constant. We know how many pages we had to fill; every issue we had to plan the stories as usual; we still had to do photo shoots and write stories and do layouts. I found myself especially thankful to have that work that I love and the people who I really enjoy working with to do those things that we know how to do and that we’ve been doing for 10 years now. 

Vicki Wellington: And I’m shocked, as I think the world is, that everyone acclimated so quickly. I was one of the last people out of the Hearst Tower. I was packing up my stuff and I found myself thinking, how was all of this going to work? And remarkably, everyone did great. It really is amazing what people are capable of doing and learning and troubleshooting; every one of us had all kinds of IT issues.

Sara Peterson: I had not heard of Zoom; I had never done Zoom. 

Vicki Wellington: It’s just amazing. And I’m impressed, to be honest, not only with our team, but with the entire company and the entire country and world. I think we’ve discovered this whole other avenue, the silver lining to the insanity of it all. The ability of people to adjust and adapt because you have to immediately.

Sara Peterson: And it was overnight. Literally, one day we were in the office, another day we were told not to come in. And we didn’t know for how long, but it was literally overnight that we all started working from home. From watching the news and the cases that were popping up, I had the thought in early March that everyone should have a laptop. 

Before the pandemic, we didn’t all have laptops. We really collaborated and worked in the office, routing physical paper copies of stories. Sure, we emailed and we had Slack, and we used those tools in the office sometimes, but not anything to the extent of physically sharing and routing in the office. So it was a real shift to virtual work.

Samir Husni: When it comes to the business side, the selling part, was it easy to do that virtually?

Vicki Wellington: It is totally different. But I will say this, one thing that’s positive is now our meetings are super-tight and condensed. So, where we might have had an hour with an advertiser or a client, now it’s much less time but it’s great because we focus in on what we want to talk about. So remarkably, it’s really been fine. We’ve gotten clients on the phone; everybody is open for meetings. I’m amazed with all that’s gone on, HGTV Magazine is having a great year. 

You know it’s a birthday year, and of course we’ll talk about that, but we’re up. I don’t know if you’ve seen our most recent issue, which I love, the July/August issue; I just love it. Every issue Sara does I love. 

Sara Peterson: Oh, thank you, Vicki. I don’t know if you felt this, but because the whole world was in this together, no one could look ahead that far during this time and that made it kind of easier, because we were all trying to figure it out together. If you’re the only one changing, it can be more difficult. There were moments in the beginning where we would ask ourselves how we wanted to do this, but we adapted very well.

Vicki Wellington: And when all our screens were blank and no one had their cameras on, we put the rule in that our staff show their faces, that’s how we roll. But so many people not on staff had a blank screen, so you’re presenting to clients and you’re excited, but it’s difficult speaking to a blank screen. 

But think about what went on this year. Again, this brand, HGTV was also a silver lining, the perfect brand to help the country during this. We played a part and to be a piece of such a big, fun, exciting brand that’s all about the home where everybody is living, what an advantage from my side, the business side, because that’s what was hot and happening. We saw the advantage of that, our subscriptions are way up, everybody has been into their homes, and who does home better than us?

We happened to have been lucky and coincidentally had research out in the field; we worked with a company called MarketCast and had this national research study being done while we were home. So we knew people painted and made things, did things they never did before and they took their money and created rooms for themselves and took on projects and were successful at them. So what an advantage to be at HGTV Magazine during this crazy year. 

Sara Peterson: We delivered what we always had, but in an even bigger way because we were doing more. So cleaning, decorating, DIY gardening; all of it, inside and out, but we were also changing rooms into offices, making them dual-functioning. That’s how we touched on the times. We’re all more intimately acquainted with our homes now than we ever were before. 

Samir Husni: During the pandemic, HGTV is one of the few magazines that did not cut its print frequency and is still doing very well. Still has the same number of pages.

Vicki Wellington: And still has a nice variety of advertisers. Fifty percent are “home” advertisers, but fifty percent are still other things. We get a lot of food, a lot of business and finance. If you’re on Zoom constantly, you love when the magazine arrives and you get to sit back, relax and enjoy it. And in this case, really do something with it. Shop from it and create a new world for yourself inside. And I think business has reflected that as hard as it’s been. 

Sara Peterson: I’m not sure if it was a silver lining, but it was definitely an advantage being HGTV Magazine. I’ve always thought of us as being the magazine that works the hardest at being really relatable, real and authentic about your home. And featuring real people in their homes has always been a thing of ours. In the house tours and the decorating stories, there’s a lot of people in the photos in the magazine; we always photograph the homeowner with their home. And that makes it feel more relatable and real when you see kids and dogs and maybe the cereal and milk is still left out on the counter in the kitchen, these are things you can relate to in real life. 

Samir Husni: Sara, I interviewed you when the magazine was first launched 10 years ago and you talked a lot about how much fun HGTV Magazine was going to be. Tell me, how can you create “fun” during a time when fun was not exactly a word people were using?

Sara Peterson: Yes, in an un-fun time. Well, you have fun momentum. You are this brand and I have a lot of adjectives that I can substitute for fun: positive outlook, upbeat, friendly, colorful; that attitude and personality. And the conversational copy that we have in the magazine. I think those are ways that we deliver “fun.” 

Maybe we weren’t having parties, but we were still picking out beautiful flowers to look at in our yards and in our homes; we were picking out paint colors and trying different DIY projects that hadn’t been tried before. Making things, but also food and entertaining ways to distract ourselves. We couldn’t go out, so we had to do stuff at home. So that’s how we delivered the fun.

We did have this long-running column from the first issue called “How Bad Is It.” Answers, conundrums and scratch-your-head questions about home life across the board. Things like how bad is it to leave the laundry in overnight, to leave it in the washing machine, just questions you might have about your household things. 

But I had seen different magazines talking about how bad is it in terms of the pandemic, with the numbers and all. And I wasn’t worried about how we were going to deliver cheerful, upbeat, fun ideas, but would it seem like we were ignoring some really bad stuff, if we had a column called “How Bad Is It,” and it was about how bad is it to have a conversation with your dog. Was that too superficial or too shallow, that it seemed to be ignoring the big worry?

So we tweaked the design and we had less serious questions and I think, if I’m not mistaken, that we skipped it one or two issues. We just didn’t run it. I did see The New York Times often did “how bad is it” with the pandemic numbers, the stats on everything, so I didn’t think it was always appropriate. 

Samir Husni: Vicki, you’re the chief revenue officer for both the Food Network Magazine and for HGTV Magazine.

Vicki Wellington: Yes, I’m a lucky girl, Samir. Who’s luckier than me? I mean, Food Network and HGTV are gigantic global brands. It’s awesome and I love it. And I haven’t been here with Sara for the whole 10 years, I came in about a year and a half ago. So she and her team deserve the credit much more than I do. I’m actually the pandemic publisher for HGTV Magazine. I’m just very lucky to be here. 

Samir Husni: As you get ready to celebrate the magazine’s 10^th birthday in October, what are the plans?

Sara Peterson: This was a lot of planning. You can imagine. All the thinking about how you’re going to make this issue special. You only get one 10^th birthday to do. I’ve always loved the fact that in magazines, you always get another issue, so you always have another take to do that story you wanted or another cover idea, but the feeling of having a birthday issue, the 10^th birthday, and we did have a fifth birthday issue, but 10 is bigger. So the pressure was on, but also the opportunities were there. How were we going to celebrate ourselves and all we’ve done. but also still deliver new ideas and new content in the magazine, not just do a look-back?

The biggest section is called the “Giant Birthday Special” and that is a celebration of our Top 10 decorating truths. Now, we don’t really like decorating rules at HGTV Magazine because so many people are creative in their homes and inventive and express their personalities. So imposing rules on decorating isn’t really our style. But our decorating truths – after going into homes and seeing how people live and decorate for 10 years, you pick up on some patterns. And you pick up on things that have worked well for people and designers in every style of home. Small homes, big homes, cottages, ranch-style homes, brick homes, just every style you can imagine.

We’re taking these Top 10 truths and making little chapters in the magazine section about those Top 10. One chapter in the section is “Add a Pop of Color.” We have always loved adding pops of color, so we’re talking about the ideas that we’ve loved, to mix old and new things. I feel that people do that so well. I’ve always been impressed at how people mix old and new things in their homes to tell their story. Things like inherited pieces or some cool flea market finds and then some new pieces throughout your home too. But that mix is always really interesting for the storytelling. 

We like to really tell the story of the home as well as the decorating ideas that people can replicate. And the mixing of old and new is really a good one too. 

Vicki Wellington: And on the business side, we have a number of things that we’re selling. We’ve got three different levels, silver, gold and platinum, and what’s nice is there’s something special for everybody. Some are native ideas, some are high-impact units. Many will be running in October, but we are celebrating the birthday in every single issue.

Sara Peterson: When Vicki invites me to a client meeting, I always use the word “special,” because it’s true. It is a special issue like no other. And if you want to be in the issue, you’re coming to a party. You’re coming to a birthday party. So, we want to have a celebratory vibe. We’ve been working on native ideas with clients that feel like a celebration. It will feel like a birthday. 

We’re also asking a ton of HGTV stars to wish us a Happy Birthday. Stars who have been in the magazine throughout the years and have had photo shoots and fun times with us. And it’s fun to see their quotes and answers, because some have been with us from the beginning too. The Property Brothers were just launching their show on HGTV when we were launching the magazine. So they go way back. And there are a lot of other stars too. And it’s fun to see them all together. 

Samir Husni: What role does the print magazine play in this digital age? 

Vicki Wellington: People want less time on the computer and we can prove it. Right now our subscriptions are up. They’re purchased digitally, but they’re print subscriptions. Just as an example, our renewals are up. HGTV Magazine happens to have one of the highest renewal rates in the company. And that’s between $30 and $45, so that’s a lot of money as you know for a magazine subscription. 

Sara Peterson: And I’m pretty proud of our newsstand numbers.

Vicki Wellington: Yes, we’ve been in the Top 10 forever. And as an example, talking about young people, our millennial numbers have grown. In the past five years, it’s grown over 30 percent. So, what the numbers tell me is that we have people buying and enjoying reading the magazine. 

And as another example, there is a digital research company called Kantar Millward Brown and we do a lot of convergent partnerships with our partners HGTV and we obviously do a lot of research to see how a campaign does and whenever print was added into the mix, everything went up. Likelihood to buy went up; preference for the brand went up. It happens so often that I literally said to the director who was running this digital research company, I keep noticing that print keeps raising the numbers. And he said that was always true. And I’ve always felt this way, but it continues to be proven by the research. Print adds a lot to the formula.

And from our circulation numbers, which are all strong, we see that people are buying and reading. They’re being pushed to go online. They love the way Sara and her team curate. They go online and it can be so overwhelming. Sara puts out this beautifully orchestrated, curated product for people first, then they go online and do their shopping.

Sara Peterson: If you ask me to talk to students, they all want to be storytellers. We’re all storytellers. And you can do that well a lot of different ways. You can pick your platform. You can have multiple platforms. You can do videos, blogs, digital; you can do a book, a magazine, a newspaper. There does come a time when you want to pick your medium for how you want to tell your story. Once you do that, what is it about that particular medium that is special and unique that can’t be done by others with your story? And what is the experience you want your readers to have with a magazine? 

With me early on, back to college, it was so satisfying to make a product. It is physical. You have this thing that you make. Sometimes I joke about being in the manufacturing business. We have to be aware of things like ink, printing, glue. I can’t tell you how much I know about glue. (Laughs) These things you need to learn about manufacturing your product. There is something so satisfying about having your hands on the thing that you make. 

I sometimes take the magazine home and look at it in home-lighting because I know that’s how people are going to look at it, not in an office setting with calibrated fluorescent lights. They’re going to probably have a 60-watt bulb in their lamp. So I ask myself, can you see the type? Can you read it okay? Things like that are fun for me when making the magazine. So, print matters because it makes the experience of seeing a story special. 

Samir Husni: Is there anything either of you would like to add?

Vicki Wellington: Just that HGTV Magazine is having a very strong year. I think the product continues to serve a purpose, part of a major power brand. It’s nice to have such a powerful brand that’s so well-recognized and loved. And it’s safe; it’s not about the pandemic; it’s not about politics. And I think advertising has backed all that up in every category. All my vital signs are good. Subscriptions are good; newsstand is good; renewals are good; advertising is good. Those are all the positives.

We continue to work with the brand on convergent ideas and that’s an advantage for this product as well. Not everybody can do that in that kind of major way. We’ve got on-air involved, digital involved. 

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Vicki Wellington: After going through a pandemic, you know what, I don’t worry as much. It really put things into perspective. What am I worrying about? Once we’ve gotten through this crazy time and we don’t have to worry about just going out of our houses or going out without gloves. So honestly for me, I don’t worry about a lot because we’ve all lived through this crazy time. The minor things at this point would be just doing a good job and getting my work done. 

Sara Peterson: I find myself thinking how much better I’m sleeping lately. There were times in 2020 where many nights I was wide awake between 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. I would think about people I missed, work, things I needed to do, was my Amazon order going to arrive on time. Did I get the groceries delivered or should I go there? Should I buy more masks and which masks, that sort of stuff. And having that tone down a little, the anxiety level, that hopefully we’ve all lowered some anxiety, sleeping better and also knowing there’s a plan now for the immediate future, has helped. 

We know our summer schedule for work. We know we’re going to phase back to the office starting in September. It’s crucial for magazine editors to have plans; we’re always planning in advance, sometimes a year in advance. And to not have a roadmap is really unnerving. So to have some things on the calendar feels good and I’m sleeping better. 

I will say the birthday issue did keep me up because I was thinking this was an amazing chance, and did I get it right? Did I do everything that I could? I had one shot; it was like my Olympics. I had been training for this for 10 issues and I had one shot. All of the issues are important to me, of course, but this one just felt so special and I wanted to be sure to get it right. So yes, that kept me up. 

Samir Husni: Thank you both. 

“In the case of Kalmbach, we’ve spent time over the last few years consolidating our brand portfolio. And now we feel we have a strong core business in trains and science. And across our brands in those categories, many of our customers still want the experience of a print magazine. And we’re going to continue to provide high-quality print experiences for those customers.” Dan Hickey…

Print and digital at their best, working together to serve the audience across all platforms. That’s the plan at Kalmbach Media. Kalmbach was founded in 1934 and continues today to delight and inform enthusiasts across many interests, from trains to science to beads and buttons. Through a diverse portfolio of brands that encompasses magazines, digital content, books and related products, Kalmbach has brought its legacy brands into the 21^st century with a robustness that is far from shy.

Dan Hickey is CEO of the company and believes in the Kalmbach mission of always putting the customer front and center wholeheartedly. I spoke with Dan recently and we talked about these brands that are very near and dear to many readers’ hearts, and to Dan’s too. Model Railroader, Classic Trains, Garden Railways, just to name a few. And about the new Trains.com website that was launched recently. For train and railroad lovers, it’s a portal to heaven with more than 20,000 pieces of content from all of their train enthusiast brands all in one spot, a massive endeavor that offers an unlimited access membership that Dan feels will excite his audience as much as it does him. With premium content created solely for the website and live video, plus access to 85 years of archives, it’s sure to cause train enthusiasts nationwide to sign up.

In fact, they launched recently and signed up thousands of memberships. Dan said that their expectations for Trains.com is that it will become the number one trains website in the world. “And it’s going to be a recurring revenue model for Kalmbach, it’s a subscription model, it’s premium content, and we expect and plan on it to be very successful.”

Indeed. It’s print and digital at their best. A successful partnership between the ink on paper and the pixels on the screen. And now the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Dan Hickey, CEO, Kalmbach Media.

But first the sound-bites:

On how things have been operating during the pandemic: It has certainly been a challenging time for everyone, but our business is doing very well. We’re having a very good year. Most areas of our business are actually doing better than last year. There has been a bit of a lift, I would say, since the onset of COVID. Some of our customers are people who have return to the hobbies, whether it’s the train category or astronomy or science. Business has done very well.

On whether he subscribes to the theory that the pandemic has been a sort of blessing to the magazine media and publishing industry: I’ve spoken to many CEOs in our peer set and all of them have told me that their businesses have actually improved during COVID, and that has been true of our business as well. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a blessing, just because of the context of it all, but our businesses have improved.

On the membership business model he is starting for Trains: A lot of publishers are turning to what I would call a new business model for digital, for websites, and for Internet businesses. At Kalmbach, our revenue is probably 90 percent from the customer today and has been for a long time. So the shift for us is just making sure that we are building digital membership products as part of our future strategy. And that’s what Trains.com really is, it reflects in our business the multiyear strategy to serve our audiences through compelling digital subscription products. So, it’s not so much of a new business model, it’s the same business model, but it’s just happening in the digital arena.

On the role of print in this digital migration: In the case of Kalmbach, we’ve spent time over the last few years consolidating our brand portfolio. And now we feel we have a strong core business in trains and science. And across our brands in those categories, many of our customers still want the experience of a print magazine. And we’re going to continue to provide high-quality print experiences for those customers.

On the plans for Trains moving forward: We’ve owned the Trains.com domain for a long time without putting it to good use, so to speak. We wanted to unlock the value of the domain because it’s powerful, for sure. And we knew by looking at our data that there was crossover between brands and we came to the conclusion that optimal value would be building one big site with multiple brands, versus five separate, distinct websites. And that’s what we did.

On what someone can get from Trains.com that they can’t get from the ink on paper publications: They’re going to find exclusive, premium content from all of our Trains brands. That’s Model Railroader, Classic Toy Trains, Garden Railways, then Trains and Classic Trains which serve the enthusiast audience that are interested in big trains. This is exclusive content, created just for them. They’re going to get expert Q&A’s, track databases. The one unique thing that they’ll be able to get is 85 years of archives of all five of our brands. And we know from our experience in data that the archives are very much valued by our customers.

On what he hopes to accomplish with Trains.com within a year: I think a year from now we’re going to tell a very compelling story, in terms of our success building a new digital subscription product and really paving the way for train enthusiasts to interact with digital content in the future.

On Kalmbach’s selling content to the audience mentality instead of selling the audience to advertisers and whether that still fits no matter the platform: Yes it does. We do advertising, but it’s a minor part of our business. It’s not a huge part, but we do it because it’s a service really to our customers, because they’re looking for products and they’re buying products on a continual basis, so they need to be connected to manufacturers and retailers, that’s just a fact of the business.

On whether the membership for Trains.com is digital only or print plus digital: The membership is an unlimited membership for digital, but we have some other products. We know the archives are valuable, so if somebody just wants access to the archives, they can purchase that for $2.99. So we’re allowing subsets of content and we’ll experiment too.

On how important the legacy brand was to this digital membership model: If you’re asking how important are our brands in establishing Trains.com, if you visit the site you’ll see that we took a lot of care, this was a massive effort as you might imagine, bringing more than 20,000 pieces of content from different websites all onto one.

On the role of the print product at Kalmbach: Again, we have a customer base that very much wants a print product. I can tell you that it’s not declining fast by any means, but it’s not growing necessarily either. For us it’s harder to find a print subscriber than it is to find a digital subscriber. The digital universe, as you know, is quite large and provides opportunities for publishers like Kalmbach to find new customers more efficiently than we can through traditional means for print products.  

On anything he’d like to add: It was a massive project for our cross functional teams; we had editorial involved; we had our marketing team; our technology team; our design team; third party vendor, and our digital team. It was a year-long project or more and we’re very excited and proud about the product and the results so far. We’re proud of the team that really came together and put Trains.com on the map for us. We’re just very excited at this point.

On being a CEO and handling the social changes that are taking place in the workplace and in the country today:As a CEO, I didn’t shy away from engaging employees in issues of race and social injustice; we had discussions. I actually got involved with employees in focus groups and I didn’t shy away from vulnerable questions about working from home; how is it working with their families, to really try and understand and have empathy for these employees who are facing very challenging times, especially if you’re a parent, with the schools shutting down and opening up.

On what makes him tick and click: Every day I have new questions and I’m a curious person. I always try to explore what might provide answers to those questions.

On how he unwinds in the evenings: I live in Wisconsin on a lake and I like to get a fishing rod in hand and get out on the dock. It’s something that relaxes me the most.

On what keeps him up at night: Thinking about our future, and not just as an industry, but as a company. And about how we’re going to be successful. We’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about acquisitions and what types of companies would make sense for Kalmbach to acquire. It’s a process that requires patience and a great deal of thought.

And now the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ interview with Dan Hickey, CEO, Kalmback Media. 

Samir Husni: How have things been operating during the pandemic?

Dan Hickey: It has certainly been a challenging time for everyone, but our business is doing very well. We’re having a very good year. Most areas of our business are actually doing better than last year. There has been a bit of a lift, I would say, since the onset of COVID. Some of our customers are people who have return to the hobbies, whether it’s the train category or astronomy or science. Business has done very well.

Our employees have moved from pretty much 100 percent in the office to about 90 percent remote work. Our collaboration and communication has been excellent. And surprisingly, our productivity has actually increased, so we’re feeling pretty good about things right now. 

Samir Husni: So when people say that the pandemic was a, and I hate to use the word blessing, to the publishing and magazine media industry, do you subscribe to that theory?

Dan Hickey: I’ve spoken to many CEOs in our peer set and all of them have told me that their businesses have actually improved during COVID, and that has been true of our business as well. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a blessing, just because of the context of it all, but our businesses have improved. 

Samir Husni: Can you tell me  a little bit more about the membership business model that you’re starting for Trains?

Dan Hickey: A lot of publishers are turning to what I would call a new business model for digital, for websites, and for Internet businesses. At Kalmbach, our revenue is probably 90 percent from the customer today and has been for a long time. So the shift for us is just making sure that we are building digital membership products as part of our future strategy. And that’s what Trains.com really is, it reflects in our business the multiyear strategy to serve our audiences through compelling digital subscription products. So, it’s not so much of a new business model, it’s the same business model, but it’s just happening in the digital arena. 

Trains.com is the answer to the question of how Kalmbach is going to serve our customers in the future. In that respect, it really represents our future path. This has been our model, but what I think is new for us is really migrating that business model to digital.

Samir Husni: What is the role of print in this migration? Will we continue to see Trains in print; continue to see the Kalmbach magazines in print as you migrate the business model to digital?

Dan Hickey: I think that will vary publisher by publisher. Larger publishers are going to have an easier time staffing both print products and digital products. Smaller media companies, smaller publishers are going to have to really balance between print and digital. 

In the case of Kalmbach, we’ve spent time over the last few years consolidating our brand portfolio. And now we feel we have a strong core business in trains and science. And across our brands in those categories, many of our customers still want the experience of a print magazine. And we’re going to continue to provide high-quality print experiences for those customers.

However, access to new premium digital products will not necessarily be included in those subscriptions. I do see publishers, the small and medium-sized publishers, looking at frequencies. Even the bigger publishers over the last five years have consolidated their portfolios, maybe have sunset some brands. But there are other levers that publishers can use to fund the investment in new digital subscription products, such as circulation and the size of the magazine, how much paper they’re using. Those are the things that Kalmbach looks at as well.

Samir Husni: What are the plans for Trains as you move forward?

Dan Hickey: We’ve owned the Trains.com domain for a long time without putting it to good use, so to speak. We wanted to unlock the value of the domain because it’s powerful, for sure. And we knew by looking at our data that there was crossover between brands and we came to the conclusion that optimal value would be building one big site with multiple brands, versus five separate, distinct websites. And that’s what we did. 

Over 86 years, we’ve developed leading brands and we’ve been serving our customers predominantly in print. Our expectations for Trains.com is that it will become the number one trains website in the world. And it’s going to be a recurring revenue model for Kalmbach, it’s a subscription model, it’s premium content, and we expect and plan on it to be very successful. 

Samir Husni: What can someone get from Trains.com that they can’t get from the ink on paper publications?

Dan Hickey: They’re going to find exclusive, premium content from all of our Trains brands. That’s Model Railroader, Classic Toy Trains, Garden Railways, then Trains and Classic Trains which serve the enthusiast audience that are interested in big trains. This is exclusive content, created just for them. They’re going to get expert Q&A’s, track databases. The one unique thing that they’ll be able to get is 85 years of archives of all five of our brands. And we know from our experience in data that the archives are very much valued by our customers. 

They’ll also get livestreaming video as well. And again, we’re going to be creating premium, new content daily that can only be found on Trains.com. Trains.com was our first digital subscription product that was all video and we had great success with that, in terms of Model Railroader fans. About 20 percent of our audience also chose to purchase the video product, so Trains.com is a continuation of that strategy, but it’s just bigger and better than what we did for Model Railroader Video Plus. 

Samir Husni: What would you hope to tell me you had accomplished a year from now with Trains.com?

Dan Hickey: We have a large ingrowing audience on a subscriber base on Trains.com, membership base. We’re creating a lot of video content and we’re reaching new customers through digital channels that we weren’t necessarily invested in previously. And that the Trains.com domain is absolutely powerful. 

Just to give you a sense of how powerful, with the launch a few weeks ago, we signed up thousands of members. It was pretty much a rolling launch, with Model Railroader Video Plus being the last to shift and redirect its customers. Our conversion from a 30-day trial membership to a full unlimited membership is around 80 percent. We consider that a very healthy conversion rate. 

So, I think a year from now we’re going to tell a very compelling story, in terms of our success building a new digital subscription product and really paving the way for train enthusiasts to interact with digital content in the future. 

Samir Husni: You have rarely been in the business of selling the audience to the advertiser, but rather selling content to the audience. As you move more into digital, are you finding that “audience first” mentality still fits, no matter the platform?

Dan Hickey: Yes it does. We do advertising, but it’s a minor part of our business. It’s not a huge part, but we do it because it’s a service really to our customers, because they’re looking for products and they’re buying products on a continual basis, so they need to be connected to manufacturers and retailers, that’s just a fact of the business. 

But in terms of Kalmbach, we’re always going to put the customer at the center. It’s been our history to provide expert premium content to those customers, they’re willing to pay a premium per subscription in many cases. The difference for us is great content allows us to charge a premium for that content and we feel that’s going to migrate over easily, based on the conversion rate that I just shared with you, so we feel that will be true for Trains.com as well.  And will we provide advertising on Trains.com? Yes, we think we can provide advertising that’s suitable and effective in the digital realm. 

Samir Husni: Did I understand you correctly when you said the membership is for digital only? No print plus digital? 

Dan Hickey: The membership is an unlimited membership for digital, but we have some other products. We know the archives are valuable, so if somebody just wants access to the archives, they can purchase that for $2.99. So we’re allowing subsets of content and we’ll experiment too. 

We’ll experiment with areas where there might be a subset of products that aren’t as expensive as the unlimited membership, but the plan for right now is that a subscriber to the magazine will get all that content, but all the new content that is created on Trains.com, they will have to buy the unlimited  membership unless they want just the archives. 

Samir Husni: But for the price you can get it all, the print and the digital?

Dan Hickey: Yes, but it’s not a combined membership at this time. You’re just going to buy a subscription for the magazine and then you go online to buy the digital product. So you would buy both products. In the future we’ll look at creating a combined membership, but today with this new product it’s separate. There is a subscription or a digital membership or you can buy both. 

Samir Husni: How important is the legacy brand to the success of this membership model?

Dan Hickey: If you’re asking how important are our brands in establishing Trains.com, if you visit the site you’ll see that we took a lot of care, this was a massive effort as you might imagine, bringing more than 20,000 pieces of content from different websites all onto one. 

One of our principles was that we wanted to still create and allow for experiences that are brand experiences within Trains.com. So we have technology, but we kept the brands alive on Trains.com. If you go to Trains.com you’ll see a section that’s Model Railroader, one that’s Classic Toy Trains, and so forth with all of our brands. 

And as you experience Trains.com, if you were only interested in Model Railroader or Live Trains, Big Trains, we have the technology really to deliver that type of brand experience. That was very important to us in building Trains.com, to make sure we didn’t diminish the brands at all. So if you want to experience three or four different brands, we have the technology and will allow for that as well. And we’ll learn how the audience is interacting with the content.

Samir Husni: And the role for the print product at Kalmbach?

Dan Hickey: Again, we have a customer base that very much wants a print product. I can tell you that it’s not declining fast by any means, but it’s not growing necessarily either. For us it’s harder to find a print subscriber than it is to find a digital subscriber. The digital universe, as you know, is quite large and provides opportunities for publishers like Kalmbach to find new customers more efficiently than we can through traditional means for print products. 

We’re going to continue to serve our customers who want print experiences for as long as they want those products and it’s economically feasible for us to do so. And because we are niche publications in these enthusiast categories, we have options that other publishers may not have. People are very accustomed to paying premium prices for our products. 

Samir Husni: Is there anything you’d like to add? 

Dan Hickey: It was a massive project for our cross functional teams; we had editorial involved; we had our marketing team; our technology team; our design team; third party vendor, and our digital team. It was a year-long project or more and we’re very excited and proud about the product and the results so far. We’re proud of the team that really came together and put Trains.com on the map for us. We’re just very excited at this point.

Samir Husni: As a CEO, what initiatives have you taken or how have you handled all of the social changes that are taking place today in the workplace and in the country?

Dan Hickey: As a CEO, I didn’t shy away from engaging employees in issues of race and social injustice; we had discussions. I actually got involved with employees in focus groups and I didn’t shy away from vulnerable questions about working from home; how is it working with their families, to really try and understand and have empathy for these employees who are facing very challenging times, especially if you’re a parent, with the schools shutting down and opening up. 

As a senior leadership team member, I really encouraged patience and empathy and really tried to listen more to our employees. And that has worked for us. We over-communicated and we were constantly surveying our employees, in terms of how things were going and did they have the tools and the resources to do their jobs. What were their views on returning to the office? What were their views on vaccinations? This was all done as a way of listening to what was happening. And we feel pretty proud of the way that we’ve engaged with our employees and that we’ve supported them and it seems to have influenced the results for the company.

Samir Husni: What makes you tick and click and motivates you to get out of bed in the mornings?

Dan Hickey: Every day I have new questions and I’m a curious person. I always try to explore what might provide answers to those questions.

Samir Husni: How do you unwind in the evenings?

Dan Hickey: I live in Wisconsin on a lake and I like to get a fishing rod in hand and get out on the dock. It’s something that relaxes me the most. 

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Dan Hickey: Thinking about our future, and not just as an industry, but as a company. And about how we’re going to be successful. We’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about acquisitions and what types of companies would make sense for Kalmbach to acquire. It’s a process that requires patience and a great deal of thought. During the pandemic, it’s been even more challenging to evaluate businesses — it is a time of uncertainty and there are question about what the future, or new normal, will look like post-pandemic. It’s challenging, but we’ll continue looking.

Samir Husni: Thank you.