Fashionably Late: Condé Kills Men.Style

mens style Reversing course yet again, Condé Nast Digital has decided to break up Men.Style -- which has served as a repository for GQ.com and Details.com content since 2005 -- into two branded sites.

"Both GQ.com and Details.com will now be able to differentiate themselves online and leverage their sites to expand engagement with their audience," said Sarah Chubb, president of Condé Nast Digital.

Expected to launch by October, GQ.com will focus on men's fashion and lifestyle, but it will also include other parts of a man's life, with sections devoted to news, entertainment, style, travel, cars and gear.

Details.com, meanwhile, will offer style advice, pop culture analysis, and reports from the fringe.

Men.Style.com drew 1.7 million unique visitors in June -- up 49% year-over-year -- according to Condé Nast.

The future of every Condé Nast property is presently uncertain. To reach its full revenue-generating potential, the company just hired consultancy McKinsey to realign its various assets.

Also, in an internal memo released earlier this week, Condé Nast CEO Charles Townsend painted a bleak picture for the second half of the year.

"We are not immune to the effects of the substantial revenue losses resulting from the deep and prolonged recession," he said. Consequently, we must realign Conde Nast to be a successful business in an emerging economy that is now predicted to be painfully slow in recovering."

Under pressure to create greater efficiencies of scale, Condé Nast in January aligned its nearly 30 magazine Web properties as a single unit -- Condé Nast Digital.

The alignment of assets came just over two years after Condé Nast seized operations and maintenance of its individual magazine sites--including Glamour, Vanity Fair and Portfolio--from CondéNet.

Then, in late April, Condé Nast decided to shutter Portfolio after just two years of operation.

 

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