SYDNEY — Grazia Australia is relaunching in a biannual print format, four years after the title was withdrawn from the market by Bauer Media.
To be unveiled March 7, the 196-page relaunch edition is published by Sydney-based Grace Publishing, which acquired Grazia’s Australian license in October 2015 and rebooted the brand in a digital format last May.
Titled “The Next Generation Issue,” the first edition of the relaunch issue features two covers: Angolan model Maria Borges photographed by Australian blogger Margaret Zhang and Australian influencer and actress Sarah Ellen Robertson, shot by Australian photographer Steven Chee.
Grace Publishing claims Grazia Australia will command the largest circulation of a commercial fashion magazine title in Australia.
The print run is 110,000 and the magazine will be audited by the Audited Media Association of Australia.
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Grazia Australia general manager and publisher Marne Schwartz, a former Bauer Media Australia executive, said he anticipates the initial audit figure to be around 100,000.
The magazine will have a cover price of 15 Australian dollars, or $11 at current exchange; however, Schwartz expects just 30 to 40 percent of the print run to be sold to consumers via two e-commerce platforms: grazia.com.au and leading magazine subscription site isubscribe.com.au.
Sixty-seventy percent of distribution is expected to come from the magazine’s commercial retail partner network of Westfield, Swarovski, Napoleon Perdis, Topshop, Nespresso, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and also Uber, with the magazine offered as either a gift-with-purchase or giveaway.
Westfield is the largest distributor, with 35,000 copies to be offered as a free giveaway in its various Australian malls.
“We wanted a different distribution channel, not the nonperforming newsstand channel,” said Schwartz.
“Grazia is primarily a retail brand, that is in our DNA. Our customer is not walking up and down Coles [a supermarket] or going to the petrol station. She is shopping,” he added. “When you look at some of the off-line vehicles that are really successful, like Porter and Qantas magazines, these are purposeful print channels and we’re really aiming to have that kind of ownership in the fashion, beauty and cultural space in Australia.”
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Grazia Australia will be the only major Australian fashion title to be AMAA audited, following the decision by Australia’s three largest consumer publishers, Bauer Media, NewsLifeMedia and Pacific Magazines, to exit the AMAA in late 2016. All three publishers said they want to focus on readership figures, such as those supplied by Roy Morgan Research and Ipsos’ Enhanced Media Metrics Australia survey.
The AMAA exodus followed sustained circulation erosion at the companies’ titles and the closure of at least six print editions last year.
In its final AMAA audit, for the first half of 2016, Pacific Magazines’ Marie Claire Australia was still the country’s highest-selling fashion title at 72,438 copies — a 9.9 percent decline on the previous corresponding period.