Most of you have never heard of Bonnie Fuller—and for good reason. Bonnie Fuller has nothing to do with floor covering or retail—or manufacturing, for that matter. Fuller has been a consumer magazine editor in chief for nearly 40 years at magazines that are almost certainly not on your nightstand. On the other hand, after being exposed to her in 2003, I have tried to incorporate many of her philosophies at FCNews. At the same time, there are some basic takeaways for retailers, too.
Fuller has not made many friends along the journey—quite the contrary, in fact—but her incredible success is rooted in simplicity, understanding the customer and an insatiable drive for perfection. She’s posted hefty circulation gains at every magazine she’s touched, including Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Glamour and Us Weekly, minting money for her bosses. When she arrives at a magazine, newsstand sales defy gravity.
Fuller’s serial successes are based on a simple premise: Give the reader what he or she wants to know rather than what we as editors think they should know. (You may want to read that again and digest.) As an example, as much as we at FCNews enjoy interviewing the highest-level executives, we know that retailers want to hear from their peers as to what’s working and what’s not. They don’t want to hear from me, and they certainly don’t want to hear from someone sitting in an ivory tower. Our executive editor, Reggie Tucker, who I’ve hired twice and has been with me for all but a few of my 32 years in this industry, will tell you, “Steve says every word has to earn its way on the page.” That was a takeaway from Fuller. We call it “no-fat” editing. We try not to put a thing in this magazine that we don’t think will work.
In some ways, Fuller is the Joel Schumacher of editing: a single-minded producer of super-efficient blockbusters, instinctively mass-market. She’s dumbed down every magazine she’s ever worked for by stripping away anything that the reader wasn’t going to be instantly interested in. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying we “dumb down” FCNews, but we like to use words like “performance” instead of “20-mil wearlayer,” or “design” versus “300 dpi.” Because that’s what your customer wants to hear.
So what Bonnie Fuller traits can you incorporate into your business?
- Attention to detail: Not a caption ever got printed in Us Weekly without passing through Fuller’s uncompromising filter.
- Ambition: People say if you’re a perfectionist, you’ll love working with Fuller. But if you want to do the basic job and go home at 5:30, you won’t. Fuller is not interested in people without ambition. Hire people who are invested in your success.
- Eye on the prize: Make sure everyone is on the same page with you. Sometimes editors would stumble out of the building after a late night to discover it was dawn. Fuller was there to do a job, and everybody else needed to be on the same page: Get onboard or get out. It sounds harsh, but a former editor I know who worked with Fuller at Glamour once told me, “She just upturns every life in pursuit of her goal.”
- Your salespeople should reflect the customer: Make sure you have some female and younger salespeople, because that is your customer. Much of Fuller’s success can be attributed to the fact that the ideas that come into her head are in sync with a broad base of women’s-magazine readers. Why? She is her reader, which is why she understands her reader.
- Transparency: Don’t be afraid to share numbers with your sales team. Some editors don’t want to know sales figures. Fuller was the first to ask what the numbers were. One of the things that makes her tick is money. When numbers were up, she knew she was doing something right.
- Challenges are opportunities to be creative: When Fuller gave birth to her first child, she timed her contractions during a meeting at Flare, gave birth that night and was calling the office at the start of the next business day. There were page proofs in the hospital bed after each of her children was born. And as for maternity leave, she packed up the baby and the nanny every morning and installed them in her office so she could breastfeed at work.
Yes, much of this—while 100% true—borders on the extreme. But extreme is what separates the winners from the rest of the pack.
Lastly, I would love to hear from you about what you’d like to see more of, less of in FCNews. Just like Bonnie Fuller, we want to give you what you want to read, not what we think you should read.
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