I've done no sewing and have little hope of doing any till school starts again in September. Meanwhile, I have been doing lots of planning and daydreaming and reading of other people's blogs. I have noticed that lots of people are complaining and wondering what is going on with Burda magazine. Well, me too! My thoughts:
- Their new website isn't particularly interesting. The internet already abounds with free content, and I don't need them to aggregate it for me. An easy to use digital index of all their patterns from past magazine issues would be nice though. This is in their best interest too, since it helps bloggers publicise their patterns, which is free advertising for their magazine.
- Getting a magazine out on time, and to all markets (e.g. Hong Kong) is critical and basic. By not doing so, we all wonder if they are about to go out of business. If I don't believe Burda will be in business over the course of the next 12 months, I won't buy a subscription. Subscriptions are far better for Burda than monthly purchases. Not only can a subscriber never skip a month, but Burda gets the money upfront. "Cash is King" in any business and a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow.
- For me, Burda's unique value proposition is a professional product: well drafted, accurately sized patterns. What Burda offers does not compete with all the free ideas floating around the web; it is a different product entirely. Keeping this professional offering up to a high standard is where I would like to see them focus. Why overload the pattern sheets with too many patterns on one page? Why not offer more detailed instructions on how to sew the designs? Much of this intellectual work has already been done in order to sell the designs as individual patterns through the website, or to give instructions in the magazine's other language editions. Surely the skilled labour to develop this stuff is 99% of the cost, and the extra pennies for a few more sheets of paper in the magazine is so marginal as to be almost nothing. The additional value to me as a consumer is far greater than the few extra cents to produce it.
I don't actually think Burda is about to collapse. It is one of over 250 magazines produced by Hubert Burda Media. I do think they are sloppy and complacent. From the outside it certainly looks like they have been beguiled by a bunch of internet razmataz about "open source" and "networking" and "third spaces" etc., and forgot that they are supposed to be running a magazine. Do I smell consultants?
Phew! That's my rant.
