By David Tingley, editor
Until 2025, as a business, we have been publishing community magazines which were distributed by door-to-door delivery as the primary way we got it into people’s hands. It continues to be the case that Lindfield Life, Cuckfield Life, Hurst Life and Hassocks Life are all delivered to thousands of homes, direct through their letterbox by our fantastic team of distributors every month. All homes in each area will receive a copy, with only a few exceptions in very rural roads and remote properties. Whilst some of these village titles can be picked up from dispensers in the villages and selected supermarkets – it is certainly the case that the vast majority of copies will be home-delivered.
However, when we were designing the business model for our latest title – Haywards Heath Life – we suspected that we may have to treat our distribution differently.
At the current time, the town of Haywards Heath has around 15,000 homes with a population of just over 33,000 (according to the 2011 Census). So, in order to adopt the same delivery method as our other four titles, we considered that – besides the very high cost of employing individuals to put a copy through each door – there would also be a great deal of admin associated with running such a large team of door-to-door delivery agents. Bearing in mind that the biggest number of homes delivered to any of our villages was around 4,600 at the time, delivering to over three times that number felt like a huge logistical challenge.
Whilst door-to-door delivery isn’t the only method for delivering magazines to large numbers of people – I do believe it is very effective. More so than, for instance, delivering via Royal Mail – where, from our conversations, many homeowners simply discarded the regular ‘pile’ of paper flyers which arrived in the post, straight into the recycling bin. We had no intention of our magazines being lumped into and lost in this mix!
Like so many good business ideas, a chance conversation with a friend prompted a change in thinking. What if Haywards Heath Life was only available to be collected by people from certain places in the town? Could that work?
On the one hand, we considered that clearly not everyone in Haywards Heath would then find a copy of a magazine each month. However, looking at it another way – everyone who got hold of our community magazine would have chosen to do so. Surely this would mean that that intention would mean each of our elected readers may be even more engaged and committed – in terms of concentration across our overall distribution. After all, with the best will in the world, we do accept that not everyone who gets a copy of our magazines through their door will read it from cover to cover. We know lots of folk do, and love what we do! But some won’t engage at all.
So, the plan was always to get our dispensers located in as many places as possible across Haywards Heath. With the clear goal of hitting as wide a demographic as possible – we don’t want anyone to not have the opportunity to find a copy and pick it up. Since the launch of our first issue, the number of dispensers has gradually increased and right now we have 18 units in locations across the town. Some are outside on the street with covers from the weather, while others are inside supermarkets and shopping centres. Either way, we are trying to make it as easy as possible for any resident or regular in Haywards Heath to find their way to a copy of our community magazine, packed with news, information and stories which are relevant to them and their location here in Mid Sussex.
I’m delighted to say that this strategy is working, as our pick-up numbers are on a gradual increase month-on-month. This week we will publish our fourth issue – the February 2026 issue of Haywards Heath Life – and it is set to be grabbed by folk in town more than ever before.
