ShopSmart
By CHRISTINA OCCHIPINTI:: May 22, 2006

New magazine offers ‘'unbiased view'’ of products.

Before you hit the stores to buy a cell phone, refrigerator or even a different kind of soap, you may want to check out ShopSmart, a new quarterly magazine from the publishers of Consumer Reports.

Yonkers-based Consumers Union says ShopSmart will hit newsstands Aug. 1 with a distribution of 800,000 copies. It will be available at Barnes & Noble, Borders and Wal-Mart, among others, for $4.99.

ShopSmart will offer “objectivity in a sea of product hype” for women 30 and up. The magazine “is going to be easy to read and very visual,” while featuring only the products that perform well during testing, said Alberto Rojas, a spokesperson for Consumers Union.

“It's going to focus on products that are the best. With ShopSmart, we know women are busy with demanding careers and demanding families, so we are going to feature products that have proven to be the best in our tests.

“We also will let readers know all the shopping advice we've acquired through the years. We'll tell readers when it's smart to spend a few dollars on an item and when it's smart to save.”

Rojas said ShopSmart won't feature advertisements, so that readers get an unbiased view of the products. “We will follow the same model as Consumer Reports, and the information is going to come from our experience as testers and shoppers. We feel that ShopSmart is going to follow Consumer Reports in its success.