2020 Azbee Awards of Excellence

Category

Overall Excellence > Magazine of the Year > Less Than $3 Million Revenue

Awarded to

Shawn Gahagan, Publisher; Kim M. Wahlgren, Editor; Ryan Kushner, Assistant Editor; Justin Eccles, Art Director

Entry details

Wood Floor Business: Empowering Wood Flooring Professionals

Issue or publication date: April/May 2019, June/July 2019, August/September 2019
Publication name: Wood Floor Business
Publishing company: AB Media Inc.
Website home page: woodfloorbusiness.com

Please describe the publication's mission and readership:

Wood Floor Business empowers wood flooring professionals by providing the technical information, business management advice and product information they need to succeed. The WFB audience includes a print circulation of 23,500 industry pros spanning all levels of the industry, from wood flooring contractors and retailers to distributors, importers and manufacturers in the United States and Canada. The brand emphasizes its connection with its readers and the industry by maintaining a vigorous social media presence and by generating a large portion of its content directly from its readers. While the brand is heavily invested in its digital presence, including a robust website and the semiweekly WFB E-News, its print magazine remains the flagship product. Although the magazine has been published for more than three decades, the WFB staff are dedicated to keeping a modern feel to every aspect of the magazine, from its newly updated design to an emphasis on finding new, intriguing authors, particularly those representing the next generation of the industry. The goal is to be sure the content of the magazine is interesting, relatable and, ultimately, useful. The WFB staff regularly get feedback from readers about how much they enjoy reading the magazine and, more importantly, how it has inspired them to improve their own businesses.

Please describe the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:

The three issues entered represent the breadth of types of content and the varied audience that WFB serves, and include both long-running features and new projects. All issues contain regular departments of the magazine, including Woodworks (short, entertaining stories from the industry), Your Business columns (social media, legal, management and other business advice), On the Job (technical topics ranging from short reader tips to in-depth job profiles), and our product sections. There are two important, labor-intensive features in the April/May issue: State of the Industry and the WFB Design Awards. State of the Industry includes surveys sent to four business types in the industry and has been relied on for 30 years as reliable data gauging the business climate. All aspects of this project, from creating the survey to compiling the results and creating the charts and graphs, is handled in-house. The popular WFB Design Awards is the only awards program in the industry open to the entire industry, with winning projects profiled by WFB editors in detail. The June/July issue's cover story, the WFB Truck & Van Contest, puts the focus squarely on one of our core audiences: the contractors and the vehicles so critical to their everyday lives. The August/September issue's cover story featured a new project: the WFB Outstanding Retailer Awards. With the increasing popularity of prefinished wood flooring, retailers are becoming a critically important part of the industry, and the intent with this new program is to showcase companies that are exceptional in some way.

Links to entry URLs

Please note: These URLs are only required for entries in the Online division categories, entries in the Design division categories that are specific to websites, entries in the Website of the Year category, and entries in the Cross-Platform Package of the Year category.

Entry URL(s), if applicable:

Links to Uploaded Entry Files

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