Takarajimasha Advances Development of Health-Focused Magazine for Seniors

Magazines with supplements like sleeping pillows have a major hit series with 1.5 million copies sold!

Starting with famous brand bags and pouches, Takarajimasha has advanced along a unique path as a publisher by including numerous items as supplements in its magazines.

In recent years, Takarajimasha has published many health and diet-related supplement magazines, including items such as belly band diets, beauty devices, shavers, and EMS. What’s even more surprising is that products for seniors are also appearing as magazines with supplements.

When and why did they start these health-focused magazines?

According to Takarajimasha, the department mainly handling goods consists of about 60 people. Among them, Jun Takada, who is involved in many senior-targeted products, provided the information.

“Health-themed magazines have been released for over 10 years. 

For example, the ‘Cool Gel Refresh’ sheet was released in 2011, and in 2016, the ‘Angel Sleep Pillow BOOK,’ supervised by Eiki Fuku Tsuji of Aska Acupuncture and Moxibustion Therapy Clinic became a hit and has evolved into a popular series with a cumulative total of 1.5 million copies” (Takada, same below).

Incidentally, Mr. Takada himself first worked on a health-themed magazine about three years ago. The first one he created was “Easy Health Habits from Your 60s! Seated Stepper BOOK.” It was a product that stimulates important walking muscles just by stepping on the pedal, with expectations of preventing falls and alleviating swelling.

“We have been broadly researching items that can easily stimulate health awareness for seniors, using TV shopping programs, newspaper ads, and the internet. Among these, the stepper caught my eye.

I thought that if we displayed it in bookstores, it might reach more people. So, we consulted with manufacturers who could handle development and production to see if we could create an original supplement magazine featuring it.”

This is because Duke Saraya, who holds walking courses nationwide, has exceptional name recognition and approachability. We asked him to supervise the project. He actually used the stepper, devised usage methods and frequency, and contributed to making it a hit product.

 

“Wrap to Lose Weight” → “Slim Down,” “Loosen” “Loosen Up” → “Body Care”

“The challenge was in the transportation aspect. Typically, items with a thickness of up to about 10 centimeters can be packaged with standard machinery, but anything beyond that requires manual work, increasing costs. Therefore, we had to consider the size that could be packaged.”