New world order - Terry Snow and World Publications

TERRY SNOW MAY NOT OWN THE BIGGEST MAGAZINE COMPANY. BUT GIVE HIM TIME

When the purchase of Saveur and Garden Design by Winter Park, Fla.-based World Publications was announced last January, reaction in the New York media fishbowl was split between those who hadn't the slightest idea what World Publications was (or what Winter Park was, for that matter) and those who hadn't the slightest idea what the publisher of Marlin and Kite Boarding could possibly want with a pair of highend, award-winning magazines for connoisseurs. It was as if the WB had announced a commitment to 13 new episodes of Brideshead Revisited.

One year later, World Publications has two things it seemed unlikely to ever possess only 18 months ago: a National Magazine Award (a General Excellence win for Saveur) and name recognition for both the company and its owner, Terry Snow, in an industry he's been a part of since he and his roommate began hawking copies of their new publication Waterskiing (now WaterSki) to fellow competitive waterskiers out of the back of a Dodge van in 1978. He was two years out of college.

Snow readily acknowledges that while he was assembling his stable of boats-'n'-boards titles outside Orlando, he always had a hankering to wake up in the city that never sleeps. "We always thought of New York as the home of the magazine gods," recalls Snow of his early days in the business, when he built WaterSki, WindRider and Sport Fishing into a mini-empire.

Snow made his first attempt to play with the big boys in 1987, purchasing the 350,000-circulation Women's Sports and Fitness. He nearly lost his shirt before selling the cursed publication in 1995 to Boulder's Rocky Mountain Sports and Fitness (which in turn sold it three years later to Conde Nast, which lost several truckloads of shirts, shorts and jogbras on it). "We really weren't ready to compete against Self and Shape," says Snow. "Since then we've stayed closer to home."

For the next decade, World remained near the marina, launching four titles and acquiring seven (some of which were folded into existing World magazines) between 1990 and 1999. The company's 1997 purchase of travel books Caribbean Travel & Life and Latitudes (the in-flight magazine of American Eagle) was a hint of things to come.

Martin S. Walker, a New York-based consultant who has worked with World Publications for a dozen years, says that despite Snow's early setback, the bright lights of Manhattan were never far from his thoughts. "Terry's always had a vision for a very large company," says Walker. "When the opportunity to buy Saveur and Garden Design came by, he felt ready to move into a larger league."

Snow wasn't necessarily stepping too far outside his team's area of expertise: His wife, Donna, is a gourmet cook who attended culinary college in New York and has what her husband calls "the best nose and taste buds I've ever witnessed."

Working in Snow's favor was the fact that the original asking price for the properties had been too rich for virtually everyone's taste--one report had Veronis Suhler shopping all the Meigher titles in 1997 in the $80 million range. ("They should have sold the magazines a year earlier," says Walker.) By the time Snow came to the table, in April 1999, most would-be suitors had passed.

"Terry worked that deal for a year," says Walker. "And every time he saw something he didn't like in his due diligence, he lowered his price."

Eventually, after nine months of patient haggling with Chris Meigher, Douglas Peabody and Herb Allen's Allen & Co., three titles (including the custom publication Friends) were Snow's for the low, low price of $15 million--only $7 million of it in cash.

So how does the new kid in town with two luxury books make a go of it in a rapidly cooling ad market? By bringing a little bit of Florida to New York. "There's definitely a New York way of doing magazines," Snow says. He pauses. "Publishers tend to throw a lot of money at [them]."

World moved in the other direction, quickly switching several back-of-house jobs to its offices in central Florida, where, Snow estimates, personnel costs are at least 25 percent lower than in Manhattan. Even after he upgraded the paper stock, which had been reduced under the old regime as a belt-tightening measure, Snow says Saveur is profitable and Garden Design should see its first black ink this year.

Meanwhile, editor Dorothy Kalins and her design wizard Michael Gross-man have snazzed up the look of Caribbean Travel & Life, while Snow's computer geeks are busy overhauling the Web sites of Saveur and Garden Design (World rolled out a revamped lineup of its older, user-friendly Web sites in January).

The biggest problem facing the company right now is regaining momentum the titles lost in the ad marketplace during the protracted sale. "Saveur and Garden Design have been below the radar since the acquisition," says American Express Publishing president and CEO Ed Kelly, whose Travel + Leisure and Food & Wine take generous servings from the kind of premium ad budgets that World Publications would love to help itself to. "Last year, in the year of all years [for ad pages], they were down. I can't believe they're going to be having a lot of fun this year."

Snow says he plans to ride out any ad market downturn by positioning his new children as "bull's-eye buys" in their respective endemic categories. With costs under control, World seems prepared to hold true to Chris Meigher's original credo of a premium product for a premium price (or, as Saveur's Kalins puts it, "Keep the unit price up, keep the sub price up and keep the quality up"). And since his name is now on the short list to see any magazine properties coming up for sale, perhaps Snow's visit to New York has only begun.

Mark Adams covered magazines for Mediaweek in 1995 and 1996.

                      World Publications at a Glance
                           CIRCULATION FREQUENCY          YEAR 2000 AD PAGES
WATERSKI                       100,000  9 Issues Launched 1978         474.8
WIND SURFING                    50,000  8 Issues Launched 1981         445.7
SPORT FISHING                  150,000  9 Issues Launched 1986         654.2
MARLIN                          40,000  6 Issues Acquired 1992         586.3
SPORT DIVER                    200,000  9 Issues Launched 1993         321.3
WAKE BOARDING                   50,000  9 Issues Launched 1993         734.8
CARIBBEAN TRAVEL & LIFE        150,000  9 Issues Acquired 1997         457.9
LATITUDES                       84,000  6 Issues Acquired 1997         248.3
BOATING LIFE                   100,000  7 Issues Launched 1997         241.2
FLY FISHING IN SALT WATERS      22,000  6 Issues Acquired 1999         180.4
KITE BOARDING                   25,000  4 Issues Launched 1999          91.6
SAVEUR                         375,000  8 Issues Acquired 2000         375.7
GARDEN DESIGN                  450,000  8 Issues Acquired 2000         361.9
FRIENDS                        300,000  6 Issues Acquired 2000            NA

COPYRIGHT 2001 BPI Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group