• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, January 20, 2014

F+W Media, which publishes newsletters and markets goods and services to craft enthusiasts via email, announced last week that it has acquired New Track Media, an enthusiast publisher and e-commerce business with a media portfolio including magazines, books, digital video, and conferences.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
 
New Track, founded in 2006, produces content across 30 different enthusiast categories, including crafts, woodworking and astronomy. The company’s properties include 13 magazines, 45 special interest publications and 37 consumer events, as well as three affinity clubs and two retail stores.
 
Like F+W, New Track combines publishing with e-commerce, in the form of eight e-commerce stores and three direct-to-consumer catalog businesses, with a distribution base of 12 million members. 

The acquisition of New Track will increase F+W’s total e-commerce division to a total of 30 community-based e-stores, handling roughly 20 million individual orders per year.
 
F+W chairman and CEO David Nussbaum noted that both companies are also rapidly transitioning from print to digital publishing and distribution strategies, predicting that by the end of 2015, the combined entity will derive 60% its revenues from digital publishing, e-commerce, products and events, versus 40% from print.
 
This is just the latest in a series of acquisitions for F+W over the last two years.

Previous acquisitions include Interweave, an art and craft enthusiast publisher with properties including 15 magazines and 10 e-commerce stores; Martha Pullen Company, specializing in heirloom sewing and embroidery, with its own e-commerce and goods fulfillment division; and Love Sewing, a popular sewing enthusiast magazine and Web site .