International Magazines Riding China's Ad Wave

Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times

BEIJING — Zena Hao, a 24-year-old publicist, avid follower of fashion trends and proud owner of four Prada handbags, has a new passion: fashion magazines. She carries home hefty copies of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and studies the pictures for inspiration.

“Before university, I didn’t read them that much because the photographs weren’t that good,” Ms. Hao said. “But now in the last three to four years, they’ve gotten so much better.”

Ms. Hao’s enthusiasm for fashion magazines thick with advertisements for Louis Vuitton handbags and Chanel lipsticks are a welcome source of revenue for magazine publishers based in New York. While fashion labels are spending more on magazine advertising in the United States, they’re pouring even more money into magazines across mainland China.

Publishers willing to contend with censorship, relationships with local business partners and low-level corruption common in many Chinese businesses are being rewarded so far.

Late last year, Cosmopolitan editors in China started splitting its monthly issue into two magazines because it was too thick to print. Elle now publishes twice a month because issues had grown to 700 pages. Vogue added four more issues each year to keep up with advertising demand. Hearst is even designing plastic and cloth bags for women to easily carry these heavy magazines home.

“We never take anything for granted. But so far this year, we look like we’re having a pretty good year of growth,” said Duncan Edwards, president and chief executive of Hearst Magazines International, which has agreements to have 22 magazines, including Elle and Harper’s Bazaar, published here. “There is an enormous hunger for information about luxury, and there aren’t many other places you can get that information than in fashion magazines.”

Many Chinese women will spend far more of their income than their Western counterparts on these magazines and the products featured inside them. According to a 2011 study conducted by Bain & Company, mainland China ranked sixth in the world for spending on luxury goods ranked by country. In 2010, it was a $17.7 billion market. Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Gucci remain the most desired luxury brands.

In recent years, Chinese people have been buying up luxury goods around the world.

 

For example, both Vogue and Cosmopolitan cost about $3.15, which is significant when the average monthly individual income in Beijing is about $733. Mr. Edwards added that it was fairly common to find Chinese women who earn $15,000 a year spending $2,000 on one luxury item.

“We’re going through this wonderful period where huge numbers of women are coming out of poverty into the middle class and beyond,” Mr. Edwards said. “Many of these women are choosing to spend on luxury goods.”

Lena Yang, general manager of Hearst Magazines China, who oversees nine publications including Elle and Marie Claire, says that the typical reader of Hearst Magazines in China is a 29.5-year-old woman who is more likely to be single than married. She has an average income of about $1,431 a month and spends $938 a season on luxury watches, $982 on handbags and shoes and $1,066 on clothes.

Ms. Yang says these women often live at home and turn to their parents and grandparents to pay for them. The study also showed that many readers in their 20s saved little.

Read more at The New York Times.