Launched 8 years ago by Signature, The Christmas Magazine has grown year by year to become the best selling magazine of its kind in the UK, generating 20% more newsstand revenue than the equivalent offerings from IPC and Hearst, says Kelsey. It is now in the newstrade’s top 15 for non-weekly single issue sales revenue (October 2012).
Signature’s Managing Director, Danny Morris stated: “The Christmas Magazine has been a huge success since it was launched in 2005 and is now the biggest-selling women’s interest Christmas special having achieved eight consecutive years of growth. We are delighted to have reached this agreement with Kelsey, a fellow independent publisher, who have the ability to fully explore the commercial opportunities surrounding this highly successful title, while this sale will allow Signature to completely focus on our core portfolio of children’s magazines. We would like to thank everyone who worked with us on The Christmas Magazine and Prism Consult, the specialist media M&A consultancy, for successfully brokering this deal.”
Kelsey Managing Director, Mandy Thwaites says: “The Christmas Magazine will allow us to extend our ever-growing portfolio of mainstream titles. It will enable us to provide a wide-reaching specialist Christmas platform for our advertisers. Alongside the print product we will be engaging readers across a variety of other platforms.”
