As part of their due diligence when they were thinking about making an offer to acquire the Chicken Soup for the Soul franchise, partners Bill Rouhana Jr. and Bob Jacobs checked if customers still remembered a name that began in 1993. Their curiosity was satisfied when a Harris Poll showed not only 88% consumer awareness about Chicken Soup but also that the public “had lots of goodwill” toward the brand. Said Rouhana, “There was an underlying sense of trust.” After forming Chicken Soup for the Soul LLC, the partners bought a majority stake in Chicken Soup from creators Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield last April, and began to institute a plan that has, in Rouhana's words, five “buckets”—publishing, licensing, media, the Internet and international.
Those areas reflect the background of the two men. Rouhana was involved with a number of Internet companies, including starting Winstar Communications. Jacobs's media career was capped when he was named president of sales of the syndication company KingWorld International. The first thing the new Chicken Soup team did was to give a new look to the books, which are now published under the direction of publisher Amy Newmark. In redesigning the covers, CSS separated the Chicken Soup from the Soul name from the topic: for example the forthcoming book on stories from basketball players is called Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inside Basketball, under the old formula it would likely have been called Chicken Soup for the Basketball Soul. The new owners also are including, for the most part, 101 stories per book.
Since the April acquisition, CSS, now distributed by Simon & Schuster, has released 36 titles and will have another three by June. The plan is to do about 12 titles annually. Sales “have met expectations,” Rouhana said, acknowledging that business slowed dramatically in November, but has picked up since. He thinks the titles may prove somewhat recession resistant—the stories provide inspiration at a low cost. CSS is partnering with various businesses and organizations to develop new titles. A new golfing book is being done with Golf Digest, while racing stories are being done with the help of NASCAR.
A relatively new deal, signed with Dick Clark Productions, could get a one-hour television show on the air by this summer, Jacobs said. CSS went with Clark, Jacobs said, “because they got it right away,” explaining that they both want the show to carry the Chicken Soup for the Soul message. The company is also in negotiations to develop TV movies that, while not drawn from CSS titles, would be known as Chicken Soup for the Soul Presents. In another deal, CSS is developing two-minute Webisodes that could be delivered to a variety of mobile devices.
To reinvigorate the CSS licensing effort, CSS signed on with IMG last year; that has resulted in a “dramatic expansion of licensing deals,” Jacobs said. Licenses range from puzzle books to comfort food. “If it fits with the Chicken Soup message, we'll consider it,” Rouhana said, noting that CSS “is not a publishing company—we are a brand company.”
To help support sales of its books and other items, CSS is increasingly using the Web. The CSS team, which has five employees in Greenwich, Conn., and two in California, does a regular newsletter sent to a list of about 500,000. The newsletter offers some advice (e.g., “Tips for 2009”) and links to CSS books. Other Internet plans are still in development. The company is exploring ways to create a community site that would link users to the best sites in the mind/body/spirit area. And before the end of the year, CSS hopes to have in place the ability to let readers build their own custom books with stories from the many Soup titles. International expansion is also down the road. Although Chicken Soup titles are sold in more than 100 countries, Rouhana's goal “is to bring the same sort of organization we've put in place in the U.S. abroad.”
A New Offer from the Original
HCI Books, which published the first Chicken Soup for the Soul title in 1993, still has the right to distribute all titles published before July 1, 2008, which gives HCI a backlist of about 190 books. HCI publisher Peter Vegso said that in response to the economic downturn “and to ease the challenges our customers are experiencing, HCI has made the original Chicken Soup for the Soul a discount brand” and will extend an extra 15% discount to the trade. In 2008 the bestselling backlist Chicken Soup for the Soul titles were the original Chicken Soup for the Soul, plus Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tribute to Moms and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Love Stories.
Moving the Chicken Soup franchise from HCI to the new owners hasn't gone smoothly. The two have filed lawsuits against each other over different issues; both suits are pending.
