Viewing 32 posts - 1 through 32 (of 32 total)
  • whatever happened to Singletrack magazine?
  • boingeyjon
    Free Member

    it used to be my favourite mountain bike magazine, but in the last couple of years it looked like it was struggling – less content, more padding, less proofreading etc. Then it vanished. I haven’t seen a copy for about 6 months. Do they still do something for subscribers or online? They’re still active on Facebook, so I’m assuming they still do something – but do they still publish a mag you can go into a shop and buy?

    keithb
    Full Member

    Er… You’ve seen the button at the top marked “Magazines”, yeah?

    I think they went subscriber only a while back, but range of subscriptions opened up massively with greater digital content/options.

    Stupid.is
    Free Member

    Nope you can still pick in up at all good News Agents.

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    tomhoward
    Full Member

    My lbs sells copies. I don’t buy them though, because I have a subscription…

    nickc
    Full Member

    There’s a magazine?!?

    etc etc

    zilog6128
    Full Member

    Damn you nick, 1 minute. Just cos I went to the trouble of making a meme!

    EDIT: I’ll post it anyway 🙂

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    Gary_M
    Free Member

    They’re still active on Facebook, so I’m assuming they still do something

    I’ve heard there’s also a forum, not sure if it’s still active though??

    fifeandy
    Free Member

    not sure if it’s still active though??

    Neither was I this morning when all that loaded was the header and a black page!

    simon_g
    Full Member

    Assuming a serious question, they focused on subscribers and selling in bike shops over broader high street & supermarket distribution (which is very wasteful and thus less profitable).

    Covered well here – http://singletrackworld.com/2012/02/issue-72-why-the-big-changes/

    The decline in the high street has brought with it an unexpected financial benefit too. You see for every copy sold in a supermarket or newsagent there typically is another that ends up in a skip. To sell 10 copies from a shelf you have to stack up 20. It’s an odd quirk of retail psychology that empty shelves don’t sell. A single tin of beans will get left alone on an empty shelf whereas a fully stocked shelf encourages more sales of beans. This is why supermarkets constantly restock their shelves during the day. Full shelves sell – half empty shelves don’t. It’s the same with magazines and the end result is a 50% wastage of all magazines that get sent to the high street. Someone pays for those wasted copies that end up as pulp, and that’s us. But if we are selling fewer copies in the high street this means we are wasting less too. As a result we don’t have to print as many and we save money. Silver linings and all that. If you want a scary number, we typically spend between £35-40k per year on printing copies that end up being pulped.

    So, having made the decision to stop chasing high street sales (not totally – you will still be able to pick up a copy of Singletrack in the high street, but there will be fewer copies to be had there) we can concentrate on our subscribers, since that is where our strongest area of growth is. We are reducing our supply of copies into the high street and taking the savings we make there and ploughing that straight back into much more productive areas like the paper stock of the magazine – The new issue is going to weigh in at around 550g compared to our existing 375g. We are also putting some of that saved money into editorial budgets to create better features with even better photography.

    We are also changing the way we sell Singletrack. We firmly believe that the starting point for many mountain bikers is through good quality bike shops and that’s why we are concentrating on making Singletrack available in more of them. But it is more than a simple retail relationship we are trying to build with them. Rather than just deliver 10 copies of each issue to them along with an invoice, we are taking the subscription model that is working very well for us and creating a unique subscription package just for bike shops. Shops subscribe and we deliver them not just mags but also advertising and point of sale materials.

    boingeyjon
    Free Member

    hoho – yes thanks for all the sarky comments! I haven’t seen a copy in a shop for ages – not just local – I’ve been a few places on trains and looked for a copy to read on the way home – no luck in shops in Manchester, Newcastle, London or Sussex. So I genuinely wondered if they’d stopped printing it. Maybe I’ll try e-mailing Chipps – horse’s mouth and that.

    rOcKeTdOg
    Full Member

    So I genuinely wondered if they’d stopped printing it. Maybe I’ll try e-mailing Chipps – horse’s mouth and that.

    or just subscribe and get it delivered to your door?

    Mark
    Full Member

    We are still stocked in over 1000 newsagents including the bigger Tesco stores and most WHSmiths.

    chipps
    Full Member

    Are you not confusing Singletrack with a couple of the other magazines that have ‘gone away’ in recent years?

    reformedfatty
    Free Member

    Still remains a bit aspirational for me.

    Not quite as barking as a.n.other biking magazine looking at ‘affordable budget full sussers’ in the 2.5-3k bracket..

    franksinatra
    Full Member

    I get the paper mag. I like the pictures and (weirdly) I think it smells really nice. Some of the content is a bit dreamy for me now but I still subscribe as I like to read it on the bog.

    Gary_M
    Free Member

    I get the paper mag. I like the pictures and (weirdly) I think it smells really nice.

    You do know chipps farts between page 22 & 23 of every copy?

    boingeyjon
    Free Member

    thanks Simon G that explains it. I haven’t seen it in about a dozen different branches of WH Smiths that I’ve tried (some seem to be stocking Cranked instead – but at £10 🙂 I’m rarely tempted!). My LBS doesn’t stock it either. With Christmas approaching I might trying dropping a few comments about subscriptions and see if Santa/my wife take the hint!

    PimpmasterJazz
    Free Member

    Nope you can still pick in up at all good News Agents.

    And Tesco.

    Edit: just skimmed rest of thread so realise Mark has already pointed this out, although I feel the point that Tesco isn’t a good news agent is still worth making. This is STW after all.

    edlong
    Free Member

    My lbs sells copies. I don’t buy them though, because I have a subscription…

    my lbs sells copies, and it’s pretty much the only reason I don’t have a subscription.

    STATO
    Free Member

    You need to look in the right places, I picked up a copy in Whetherby services at the weekend, clearly targeting the trail center tourer market.

    scandal42
    Free Member

    I read it in Tesco every month

    Goldigger
    Free Member

    I’ve heard there’s also a forum, not sure if it’s still active though??

    If you find it can you post the link on here please? 😉

    jonnyboi
    Full Member

    I used to get singletrack mag delivered on subscription. Now they just send me a weighty magazine shape envelope instead. Bizarre

    blader1611
    Free Member

    Is it not available in Waitrose?

    RustySpanner
    Full Member

    reformedfatty – Member
    Still remains a bit aspirational for me.
    Not quite as barking as a.n.other biking magazine looking at ‘affordable budget full sussers’ in the 2.5-3k bracket..

    I read and enjoy the travel bits and the op ed pieces.

    Mark made a conscious decision that the magazine would become ‘Inspirational and aspirational’ some time ago.

    The prices of the bikes and kit they tend to review usually has no relevance to me or most of the people I know.
    I understand the financial logic behind this, but, tbh, I find it alienating.

    ST used to celebrate the pure, simple act of riding.
    I think it’s a shame that a conscious decision has been made to move away from that.

    lurpak
    Full Member

    Have to agree with Rusty. I’m never going to tour the Atlas Mountains and the like, only ever likely to be riding in the UK, so the’aspirational’ thing jars and I skip it in the mag, looking for UK content, hoping it’s just a phase and that a celebration of the joy of local mountain bike riding will be back along soon.

    burko73
    Full Member

    £1.50 a month and you can get it on your phone/pc/ tablet and also lose all the ads on here.

    RustySpanner
    Full Member

    Lurpak, I actually enjoy the travel bits.

    I just feel that the move to fetishise the acquisitional and aspirational over the inspirational can only lead the magazine down the path of becoming yet another glossy lifestyle bible.
    Be interesting to see what happens when the current bubble finally bursts.

    Luckily the writing and photography are still top notch, but it’s a very fine line.

    beer247
    Free Member

    I used to work for a (now defunct) newspaper & magazine wholesaler.

    Unsold newspapers/magazines were returned, scanned in and credited back to the outlet.

    There was a office team managing this, so say a shop had 5x copies of a magazine and only sold one, then they might only be sent 3 the next month.

    Obviously if they didn’t sell any then they might stop receiving completely, and their allowance moved to another outlet, hence why you might not see that mag on the shelves in your local shop as much.

    It was crazy when all the unsold magazines/newspapers came back and they were just chucked in a skip.

    Company policy was that it was stealing if you were caught taking anything off the premises.

    During my two years there i half inched a copy of the Dirt100 and that was it (even then i asked for permission from the returns manager!)

    I think the new Sender/Cranked/Shredder magazines are the way forward, not everyone wants to digest their media via a computer/tablet/phone!

    burko73
    Full Member

    I used to buy magazines if I was off on holida6 or a long train journey etc but the lack f actual content these days in most mags is appalling. A lot of mags are near a £5 a throw now and take 5 mins to scan through. Better value to buy a hardback book!

    nwmlarge
    Free Member

    I’m a Sender subscriber and so far the content is great.

    I recently stopped subscribing to MBUK as it’s out of date junk.

    At the market in Chelmsford they sell NOS old magazines so it seems not all end up in a skip.

    PimpmasterJazz
    Free Member

    At the market in Chelmsford they sell NOS old magazines so it seems not all end up in a skip.

    He used to do Colchester too*. 😆

    *This is going back 20 years, so I’m assuming it’s the same person/family. 😳

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