• by Larry Dobrow , June 3, 2003

Hoping to fill what the magazine feels is an underserved demographic niche between the lad mags and GQ, Ramp has announced a editorial refocusing and redesign. The changes will be phased in starting with the magazine's July/August issue, which hit newsstands yesterday.

According to president and publisher Richard Amann, the changes won't render the magazine unrecognizable - readers will still get the men's-mag staples of gals and gadgets, fast cars and fashion - but they will better reflect what the post-Maxim audience wants in a publication.

"[The laddie mags] do what they do really well - why try to emulate that?" he asks rhetorically. "But there's a void once that reader ages a little bit, and that's where we want to be. We want to be the first into that unoccupied space." His model for the redesigned pub is British GQ.

Amann, who arrived at Ramp 10 weeks ago, says the changes reflect feedback from the nine-month-old title's readers and advertisers, who are eager to hit what he calls "the sweet spot" of men between 25 and 35. "One fragrance advertiser [who he declines to name] told me, 'It's so hard to find that guy in print. If you deliver on your promise, it'll be a home run,'" he recalls.

Not surprisingly, Ramp is aggressively pursuing advertisers in the automotive, fashion and liquor categories. However, Amann sees renewed opportunity in the gaming category: "It has always skewed young, but this crowd has grown up on the Internet and electronic gaming."

By the time 2003 ends, Ramp will have published six issues; the magazine is moving to a ten-times-a-year schedule in 2004. Current circulation is 240,000, though Amann notes, "We hope to bump that up regularly."