Flare is being pulled from the newsstands

Come January, Flare magazine will no longer be available on newsstands. According to a story in the Globe and Mail, Rogers Media has decided the plummeting sell-through on the magazine no longer justifies the cost. The fashion magazine's single-copy sales have fallen from 12,000 a month in 2012 (where they represented 9.6% of total circulation) to an average 2,600 in the first six months of 2015 (or 2.8 per cent.) By comparison, Flare's digital circulation has grown to average 29% of its total circulation. 

Publisher Melissa Ahlstrand said newsstand sales -- once a bellwether of readership -- is no longer thought so. 

“Whether it be through Texture or Snapchat or Periscope or print, we want to have people connect with our content and the work we’re doing with advertisers, on any platform where they want to be,” she said. 

Ms. Ahlstrand said Flare’s editor Cameron Williamson recently met with a group of university students who told him that they read the magazine. “Ten minutes into the conversation, he realized they were following us on Instagram and Twitter, they didn’t actually read the magazine. But they called themselves readers,” said Ms. Ahlstrand. “We love that, and we want to engage with that demographic on whatever platform they’re going to come to us on.”