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November 6, 2003updated 17 May 2007 11:30am

Perfect Home’s new owner to boost size and cut price

By Press Gazette

The acquisition of Perfect Home follows the launch of Everything Spain

Perfect Home is to relaunch with increased pagination and in a bigger format in a bid to boost sales under new owner Brooklands Magazines.

The investment follows the sale of the monthly home interest title by Fox Publishing for an undisclosed amount this week.

The deal has led to four of the seven staff – editor Zena Alli, deputy editor Julia Fisher, sub-editor Isobel Clark and editorial assistant Lorraine Crighton-Smith – leaving Perfect Home. They decided not to accept jobs with the new company because it would have meant moving from their offices in Richmond, Surrey, to East Grinstead in West Sussex.

The remaining staff are now working on a major relaunch of the magazine, due to be unveiled in the February issue, out on 8 January.

Art editor Michelle Rive has transferred across and will work under Julie Wrench, former designer on Home magazine. Brooklands is to recruit a new editor and, in the meantime, the magazine will be overseen by group editor Ann Wallace, who was the launch editor of OK!.

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Darren Styles, managing director of the Brooklands Group, said pagination would go up from 132 to 164 and the £2.80 cover price would be cut by around £1. Styles said there would also be changes to the editorial content, which would be less focused on “urban chic” and a lot broader.

“At the moment, it is targeted very much against Living etc, but the title Perfect Home doesn’t say ‘trendy, young and urban’. We will be broadening out the content to make it more related to its title. It will be very accessible,” he told Press Gazette.

He stressed it was never going to be the “next Ideal Home”, but said he intended to increase Perfect Home’s sales from around 24,000 to 70,000, backed by a major news trade promotional push through spring 2004 into summer. “We have got an opportunity to take this from an OK level and turn it into something bigger and stronger,” he said.

The acquisition follows the company’s launch last week of bimonthly Everything Spain, sister title to Everything France. Styles said Perfect Home was a good fit with the France and Spain titles and he hoped to repeat the success of Everything France, which switched from bimonthly to monthly in May. The company is also gearing up for a launch early next year in the homes, travel and property consumer market.

Fox Publishing’s managing director Gregor Rankin said the approach to buy Perfect Home had come at an “opportune time”.

By Ruth Addicott

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