A sprint in the print business; Gripped is about to launch its fourth niche magazine

Scaling the CN Tower takes guts. David Chaundy-Smart, an experienced climber, knows this because he did it. Something else that takes guts — launching a magazine during a recession while longer-run technological shifts have thrown the entire publishing industry into doubt.

Here too, Mr. Chaundy-Smart, now the 47-year-old executive editorial director of Gripped Publishing Inc., has experience.

Ten years after his much-publicized stunt, that sense of daring compelled him to channel his passion into a livelihood by launching Gripped, the first magazine in Canada about rock climbing. He and business partner Sam Cohen were working
without a safety harness.

The pair made it work. Gripped has grown steadily, and has been joined by two other titles, Triathlon Magazine Canada and Canadian Running.

The climbing magazine, which tests products and reviews rock faces across Canada, has a circulation of about 12,000, making it a niche player in the overall national magazine market. It has gained about 31,000 subscribers since its launch two years ago, putting it at the lower end of the mainstream market.

Aside from the publishing group’s diligence to the tried-and-true sales methods of direct-mail and newsstand marketing, the secret to their success, Mr. Cohen says, is the personal interest the employees bring to every issue.

Toronto-based Gripped employs 10, including Mr. Chaundy-Smart and Mr. Cohen. The two are avid rock-climbers while the rest of the staff is a collection of record-holding marathon runners or  triathletes.

Industry experts say there may be another reason for Gripped’s  success: It has come up with a publishing model that is working at a time when others are failing -identifying and satisfying narrow but profitable markets.

“I think what we’re going to see over the next little while is what they [Gripped] seem to be doing, which is looking for niche markets to develop magazines for,’ says Prof. Chris Waddell, director of the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University in Ottawa.

New technologies are affecting structural change across the mainstream media, breaking apart broader offerings into specific, interest-oriented products, Prof. Waddell says.

He says the phenomenon is seen most acutely in television, where specialty channels are taking market share away from conventional broadcast networks. It is, he says, why The History Channel and Food Network are profitable while conventional stations owned by Global and CTV Inc. are not.

“I think we’re going to see more of that in the print business,” Prof. Waddell says.

That may already be the case. Time, one of the largest general-interest magazines in Canada, has seen revenue slip 24% since 2003, the year Gripped launched its second title, Triathlon.

Now, Gripped is launching a fourth magazine, Cycling, in March. ‘The value of launching a magazine during a recession is, times will get better,’ Mr. Cohen says.

That remains to be seen. Even for niche players, print media hardly can be described as a growth market these days. Circulation and revenue figures have declined for most magazines in Canada since 2003, according to figures from Masthead, an industry Web site.

“Our expectations are not huge,” the publisher admits, “they are realistic. Any new publication faces its biggest challenges in its first year as advertisers are wary of spending on a publication with an unproven customer base,’ Mr. Cohen says.

Gripped also has learned the ropes of Canada’s grant network, tapping federal and provincial bodies for financing designed to seed new ventures such as Cycling. From time to time, the publisher has received financing from the federal Canada Magazine Fund and it also obtained discounted mailing rates from the Publications Assistance Program. The Ontario Media Development Corp. also provided grants of $25,000 to launch Canadian Running and Cycling.

Mr. Cohen says that these taxpayer-funded organizations have proven invaluable to sustaining domestic producers in danger of being squeezed out by larger U.S. competitors. The grants have allowed Gripped to grow, but other smaller players merely hang on as they struggle to find economic equilibrium in an age where the rules are being redrawn. Driven by the rise of blogs and other low-cost, widely accessible Web sites, publishers everywhere have seen adver tising revenues strained.

To compete and remain relevant to advertisers and readers, Gripped operates Web sites for all its titles, offering a portion of what subscribers get in print. However, as e-readers and smartphones push more people online, Mr. Cohen says his
company is going to have to decide if it will embrace free or keep content cordoned off.

“Obviously there are huge challenges in front of us,” he says. Yet ultimately, he contends people will awake to the realization paying for professional work is worth it.

Advertising fragmentation will likely continue, Prof. Waddell suggests, meaning publications will have to rely less on their historic source of revenue and more heavily on subscriptions, both off and online.

That means more pricey subscriptions, but also a reinforcement of high-quality content.