Surfing Girl Relaunches With Snow and Skate
Surfing Girl magazine is relaunching sg: Surf Snow Skate Girl, according to New York-based PRIMEDIA, publisher of more than 300 special interest publications, including Seventeen, Surfer and Hot Rod.
San Clemente, Calif.-based Surfing Girl, which started out as an annual bathing suit supplement in Surfer magazine, launched as its own publication in 2001. The magazine, which is published six times per year, has an estimated readership of 450,000.
The new publication, which hits newsstands on Sept. 10, will continue to target girls between the ages of 15 and 22 with content that covers boardsports culture as well as fashion, beauty, health and music.
The new makeover coincides with the recent release of movies such as “Blue Crush,” which helps to encourage young women to take chances in sports, said sg publisher Peter “PT” Townend.
“The new title speaks to the surging growth and popularity of girls’ surfing and other boardsports,” he said. “The fact that we’re relaunching the magazine now is a testament to the health of this marketplace and the audience’s extraordinarily positive reaction to our product.”
To get its point across to its readers, the magazine’s debut issue features three top crossover athletes who epitomize what sg is all about. The cover features Veronica Kay, surfing team rider for Roxy, snowboarder and model; Cara-Beth Burnside, champion skateboarder and winner of a bronze medal in the 1999 X Games; and Shannon Dunn, winner of two gold medals in snowboarding at the X Games (also named X Games Best Overall Athlete) and winner of the Chevy Grand Prix Tours.
“There’s a natural synergy between the three boardsports,” explained editor Kai Stearns, adding that the publication is following the path created by young women’s surfwear makers, including Roxy and Billabong, that already cater to those action sports genres.
“In the same way that Surfing Girl grew up with the women’s surf market over the past five years, now we’ve identified this crossover trend and we’ve made the move to broaden our editorial to reflect that movement in boardsports,” Stearns said, adding that the publication’s readership will see a noticeable increase in volume by next spring. —Claudia Figueroa
