'Domino' Falls: Conde Nast Closes Shelter Title

domino magazineThe shelter magazine category continued to implode this week with Conde Nast's announcement that it will close Domino, a shelter title that targeted a new generation of home-owning women with hip design ideas, after its March issue.

Editor Deborah Needleman and publisher Beth Brenner are both leaving Conde Nast; the Web site will also be closed. Domino follows two other Conde casualties: Golf for Women and Men's Vogue, closed in July and November, respectively.

With its rate base peaking at 800,000, Domino rode the tail end of the housing market boom from its launch in 2005, as ad pages doubled to 752 in 2006. But as boom turned to bust towards the end of that year, the title started to slip, with ad pages falling 3.7% in 2007 compared to 2006, and another 4.1% in 2008 compared to 2007. Feeling the effects of the financial meltdown and recession, the magazine fell off a cliff in 2009, with ad pages plummeting 51% to 22 pages in the January/February issue, according to MIN Online. Domino is just the latest in a growing list of expired shelter titles. 2007 saw the demise of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia's Blueprint and Conde Nast's House & Garden, followed by Hachette Filipacchi's Home, Hearst's O at Home, and Time Inc.'s Cottage Living in 2008, and Meredith's Country Home earlier this month.

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The reason is bottom-line. According to the Publishers Information Bureau, total ad pages in the home furnishings and supply advertising category fell 17.9% in 2008 compared to 2007, while financial, insurance and real estate fell 17.3%.

Indeed, things are looking pretty grim for most of the surviving shelter titles. So far in 2009, ad pages have fallen 46% Architectural Digest (to 129), 34% at Dwell (60), 20% at House Beautiful (62), 36.5% at Martha Stewart Living (36.5%), 27% at Southern Living (132) and 29% at This Old House (34). One of the few bright spots was Hachette's Elle Décor, which grew 3.2% to 77 ad pages.

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