Spacing magazine to go retail in the spring, selling its city-style merchandise

Spacing magazine is shopping -- for a place to sell its burgeoning line of merchandise that relates to its city-building mission. It has plans to open a retail store in Toronto in the spring, though the location has yet to be decided.

Publisher Matt Blackett tells us they are open to traditional retail strips and are discussing the possibility with  developers about opening in the base of a new condo development. 

"Our plan is to sell our own merchandise (buttons, magnets, toques, etc) as well as many other Toronto-, neighbourhood-, and city-centric stuff like vintage & creative maps, photo prints, notebooks, clothing, bags, calendars, coasters, glass wear, jewelry (i.e., stuff made from bike parts), etc. We have discovered a lot of people making their own stuff that we can sell on consignment. We also plan to have a curated book section of 50 books all focused on urbanism. 4 books a month would move in & out each month. We plan to move the mag's office into the back of the store too — we're a magazine about life in the public realm, so it seems natural for us to be much more accessible to the public. 

"We deal with enough work with stores to realize that there is a niche for us to fill. And with the changing nature of the publishing world we feel it's only natural for us to explore other avenues of revenue." 

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Canadian Geographic getting out of the merchandising business?

Canadian Geographic has always been among the leaders in Canadian consumer publishing in terms of developing line extensions and exploiting their hard-earned brand.

One of the areas in which they showed such leadership was in merchandising, selling everything from maple butter to telescopes and branded T-shirts. That is coming to an end, apparently, with a giant "inventory blowout" on the merchandising site which seems to confirm rumours that CG is shutting down this division. It's not known if this means that the CG "store" will disappear entirely or merely shrink back. But when you're selling your stuff at 25% to 75% off, its pretty clear it's not business as usual.

There was also some talk a while ago that CG would be launching a digital edition. That is apparently on the shelf now. Perhaps one of those shelves that are emptying at deep discount prices.