They’ve Got Junior Baseball Covered

With a paid circulation of more than 35,000, Dave and Dayna Destler seem to have hit the sweet spot with their Junior Baseball magazine.

The couple say the bimonthly publication has given them a better living than they had as publishers of a magazine for British car enthusiasts or, before that, as graphics designers.

Typically 40 to 56 pages, Junior Baseball is filled with full-color ads for Wilson gloves, Louisville Slugger and Easton bats, even snack foods.

“Junior Baseball has been supporting us very comfortably over the last two years,” said Dayna Destler. “Previously, with our other [magazine], it was always hand-to-mouth.”

The first year of publication for the 3-year-old Canoga Park-based publication was a struggle, but by 1998 the company had profit in five figures, Dayna said. By the end of last year, she said, profit was into six figures.

But it’s not exactly easy street. Today’s crowded magazine market, plus changes in magazine distribution systems, put small publishers like the Destlers in a constant struggle for shelf space, advertisers and subscribers.

New technology, however, has also made it easier than ever for a mom-and-pop publishing venture to go to press.

“Traditional publishing economics have changed,” explained Hugh Roome, executive vice president at Scholastic Inc. and chairman of the small magazines group at the Magazine Publishers of America, a New York-based trade group.

“Access to newsstands and direct sales have diminished,” he said. “But on the other hand, some of the entry barriers have fallen. Technology has lowered the cost of actually producing a magazine.”

Technology also has allowed publishers to use databases to more easily target specific groups, a boon to niche publishers. Niche publishing can be lucrative, Roome said, if a publication can find “an area of interest to readers and advertisers that is defensible against competition.”

The Destlers are no strangers to publishing, having founded British Car magazine (which began as British Car and Bike) in 1985. Like Junior Baseball, British Car began as a labor of love, born from Dave’s hobby of restoring classic English autos.

The Destlers, who met as students at Cal State Northridge, started a graphics business in the 1980s. But as businesses began doing their own desktop publishing, the Destlers found their bread-and-butter jobs drying up. Since Dave also was writing freelance articles about classic cars, the time seemed ripe for a magazine devoted to the British auto.

With only an idea and not even a prototype, they began selling subscriptions at car shows.

“We had more enthusiasm and naivete than publishing experience,” Dave recalled. “We just figured out the publishing as we went along.”

Using their own resources to finance the first issue, they began publishing the mostly black-and-white magazine, putting out four issues the first year before graduating to bimonthly. They soon gave up the graphics arts business entirely.

By the early 1990s, they were ready to take British Car “to the next level” and make it a bigger publication.

Meanwhile, their son, Dusty, then about 9, was playing baseball, which became a family activity with Dave coaching and Dayna serving as scorekeeper.

One day, while at their magazine distributor’s office, they were looking for something for Dusty to read. They searched among the hundreds of magazines displayed there but couldn’t find anything baseball-related that would appeal to a 9-year-old. An idea began to glimmer.

When Dusty’s traveling team went to the Amateur Athletic Union national championship games in Kansas City, Mo., the Destlers realized that a lot of families were spending a lot of time at ballparks around the country.

“We realized then what a market we might have,” Dayna said.

The Destlers, who had gone to the nonprofit Valley Economic Development Center in Van Nuys for help in getting financing to expand British Car, began to think in another direction. The more they researched, the more “we decided it would make more sense to put the effort into a new title” rather than refinance to expand the old one, Dayna said.

For instance, 1990 census figures showed that “more than 9 million kids play baseball. But there were only 500,000 British cars in the U.S. at that time. Baseball was a bigger market.”

Through the Small Business Administration’s Small Business Development Center they took a 10-week entrepreneurial course to learn how to write a business plan, then went to work researching the market.

“We compiled a list of potential advertisers, made a business plan, did the research and discussed risks,” Dayna said. They used census figures for demographic information and the Encyclopedia of Associations to find various baseball programs across the country.

They used national computer telephone books for leads on equipment manufacturers and potential advertisers. They collected magazines and newspapers related to baseball, children or family activities to find advertiser leads and to see what kids--and parents--were reading. They investigated costs of paper, printing, distribution, even salary trends in publishing.

Finally, after about three years of research, they were ready to make the leap. To finance the new publication, they sold British Car and, armed with a 2-inch-thick business plan, got a “substantial” SBA loan.

They created a slick, four-page prototype to show to potential advertisers, and in December 1996 launched Junior League Baseball. Later, they changed the name to Junior Baseball to broaden the magazine’s appeal to include all types of youth baseball, not just leagues. Subscriptions run $17.70 for six issues.

When they started, Dave said, they had five full-time employees.

“After a year, we saw that money was going out faster than it was coming in,” Dave said. “When we hit bottom, it was very scary. We got very ambitious. Sometimes the hopes and dreams you have keep you from being realistic.”

“We used up all the money from the loan and the sale of the other magazine,” Dayna added.

They had to lay off their employees, “which was one of the hardest things we ever did,” Dave said. But in six months, they turned the magazine around. Because of that experience, Dayna added, “we will be very cautious with our growth.”

Today, the staff is mostly Dave, Dayna and son Dusty, now 15 and a high school sophomore who plays junior varsity baseball. Dusty is the magazine’s official equipment tester and also interviews professional ballplayers for a “When I Was a Kid” column.

Even daughter Deanne, 10, occasionally pitches in at the office. They also have two part-time employees and rely on freelance writers and expert contributors for editorial content.

According to the couple’s 1999 circulation breakdown, the magazine had 11,000 paid subscribers. Single-copy sales were estimated at 24,200 and another 1,000 or so magazines were distributed for promotional purposes.

Advertising support has been good, the Destlers said, with about half the magazine’s revenue coming from advertising and about half from subscriptions.

Junior Baseball is distributed through some newsstands and chain stores, such as Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart, Kmart, Sport Chalet, 7-Eleven and Kroger supermarkets.

Nevertheless, “fighting for newsstand space is a constant battle and has become more difficult over the years,” Dave said. “You have to be there for the exposure for the advertisers, but you don’t make anything. It’s very hard for a special-interest magazine to survive on the newsstand today.”

They have better luck these days through an Internet site (https://www.juniorbaseball.com) and through venues such as trade shows, junior baseball conventions and tournaments.

“We feel that the formula we have now is working very well,” Dave said. “The last two years were the best we’ve had. We’ve barely scratched the surface [of this market].”