Craft—by which I mean the likes of embroidery, knitting and card making—doesn’t particularly “float my boat”. However, I do have a mild curiosity about the related magazines those hobbies and professions inspire, not least because I imagine it’s a rather more competitive field than you might expect from all those soft pastel-coloured covers. Certainly, its the only magazine sector to recently draw the attention of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), successor agency to the old Monopolies and Mergers Commission.
The trigger for the CMA’s interest was the acquisition earlier this year, by Immediate Media in Bristol, of a portfolio of 19 titles from a streamlining, “refocusing-its-core-priorities” Future Publishing Limited based in neighbouring Bath. The titles covered craft, genealogy and cycling. By no means a small transaction—£24 million swapped bank accounts—the CMA’s investigation was raised in part because both companies had become major players in the craft sector.
It could be argued—and it probably has been—that the deal meant that Immediate Media was essentially buying the principal rivals to its own brands. For example, Immediate Media publishes Knit Today (ABC audited circulation of 20,847 in 2013); the deal with Future gave them the better-selling Simply Knitting (ABC figure: 39,220). Could this concentration of publications “give rise to a substantial lessening of competition”, with negative consequences for both readers and advertisers?
The CMA’s phase one investigation found that craft magazines’ readers tended to be predominantly women (average age 50) who purchased magazines about the specific crafts they were most interested in. Because of this, the CMA concluded that they had to consider each craft market as essentially separate. Their research also determined that readers of craft and genealogy magazines—plus the companies which advertise within their pages—didn’t consider websites to be a viable alternative, since those failed to provide enough similar content.
The CMA did not find that the merger raised substantial competition concerns in relation to the general craft, paper craft, knitting and crochet, or indeed the cycling and triathlon magazines. So, doubtless, big sighs of relief at Immediate Media. However, the CMA did have concerns when it came to needlecraft, and genealogy. They argued that Immediate Media’s acquisition of the Future titles meant it now has a near monopoly in needlecraft titles (producing World of Cross Stitching, Cross Stitcher and Cross Stitch Crazy) and published two of the main genealogy titles on the market (Who Do You Think You Are? – linked to the BBC series of the same name – and Your Family Tree).
It didn’t help that other “major and specialist magazine publishers” told the SMA that they would be unlikely to enter those markets given Immediate Media’s increased domination of them. So, with this lack of overt competition, the CMA concluded “that the merger may lead to higher cover prices or a reduction in choice or quality for readers and advertisers in needlecraft and genealogy magazines”.
Immediate Media has since proposed to sell the print and associated digital editions of Your Family Tree, Cross Stitcher, and Cross Stitch – indeed, the CMA accepted that the sale of those titles to Dennis Publishing, would not require any further investigation. It’s also an interesting new direction for Dennis, which has not previously had as much as a toe in either the craft of genealogy sectors.
Hopefully, too, it’ll be a relief for the editorial teams working on those respective magazines; at last, they’ll have some stability to look forward to!
