Planet Muscle

Jeff, I have looked high and low, and none of the dinky little mart-stores, in my small Kansas town, carries Planet Muscle. (It’s only 1,717 people) with just some 3-4 small stores and gas stations. There is a Wal-Mart about 40 miles away, but I looked and Planet was not there.

Maybe we were reclassified along with Pluto? Wal-Mart will not accept the current format, yet, unless, (or until) we stop showing bare Tush. For the record, MD and Flex had the same problem a few years ago and had to minimize the Maximus. The problem is that my testosterone is about 900, so this is a personal strain for me to do, especially with BUTTS like Jamie Eason’s, Ava Cowan and Dr. Gabby’s, abounding and bulging about! But, I assume we will “de-butt” as we grow (and perhaps, as I may grow up).

In the meantime, PlanetM has the same variability that most new magazines do at age 4-5 to the national stands, as national distribution has been consolidated greatly to a few (3-4 majors) and it is much harder to launch magazines these days, than it was 20 years ago, to get distribution. Remember, now days, you need to buy distribution (and that is why you find M&F many more places than you do Iron Man, Joe Weider being much richer than John Balik). Even so, I bet we have 30 times the distribution M&F did (then Muscle Builder), when it was age 5, and at their same time period, and the same degree more than MD had, at age 5, back in 1969!

Not to mention three times more pages than each had or 7-fold in those black and white days! Plus, we are growing, so PM will eventually show up at there small marts in your area. In the meantime subscription is the easiest as there is post service there and you can save up to 78% from the stand prices, which in 2007, are $5.97 each. By the way, in today’s rougher distribution, we end up retaining about 30% of that which does not even get close to hacking 25% recoup of costs so this is why you see so many advertising pages in all the mags—the old guys would probably go out of business, if MuscleTech pulled their numerous ad pages.

M&F, Flex and M&F-Hers are all for sale. It’s just too hard for them to hack it these days. At any rate you get, by far, the BEST deal of any magazine with PM --subs are now: $6.97 for 4 issues, $12.97 for 8 issues or $19.97 for 16 issues.

For those of you also compromised, go to our website at www.planetmuscle.com to find out where the best avails.

A short list includes:

A&P stores, CVS Pharmacy, Albertsons, Bartell Drugs, Bi-Lo Stores, Books-a-Million,
Borders, Barnes and Noble, Crowley Books, Dillions/Gerbes/Bakers Food for Less, Family Foods, Eckerd/Brooks, Giant Eagle, Hastings, King Soopers, IGA, K-Mart, Krogers, Military stores ands outlets, Piggly Wiggly, Safeway, Rite-Aid, Quikmart, Sac-On, Ralphs, Shopper Drug Mart, Varying airports, local newsstands, Target, United drugs, Walgreens, Some BNC’s, Winco, Winn-Drive. Once more, we have close to 50,000 distributed alone, just through the national 7-11 chain of stores.