M magazine, the high-end fashion publication that bit the dust in the early ’90s recession, will be relaunched by Condé Nast’s Fairchild Fashion Media group, it was first reported by nypost.com yesterday.
“We think the men’s market is hot,” said Fairchild CEO Gina Sanders.
Peter Kaplan, editorial director of Fairchild, will oversee the relaunch of the quarterly, with the first issue hitting in September.
“It will be a big, beautiful magazine with a circulation of about 100,000,” said Kaplan. “It will be for guys in their 30s and 40s who are Web-savvy but want to hold onto print.”
Kaplan wrote for the original M, edited by the late Clay Felker and Jane Lane. The last issue appeared in late 1992, a victim of the economic downturn that ravaged magazines of that era.
“The other magazines are really mass circulation,” he said. “We’re targeting men whose life is style, who see the world through the lens of style.”
Kaplan said he eventually expects to stitch together a staff of about 25 people.
“I’m putting together a staff out of a combination of WWD and Style.com,” he said. “We’re tapping into the men’s expertise on both staffs.”
The M remake is just the latest mag launch to try to tap the luxury ad market, which has been resurgent even as the rest of the economy shows only a halting recovery.
Departures, from American Express, soared 43 percent in ad pages last year and has continued to climb in 2012.
W, which is aiming for high-income fashionistas, was up 5 percent last year and jumped another 14 percent in the first half of 2012 to 501 ad pages, according to Media Industry Newsletter.
And that has attracted lots of new entrées. Most intriguing is the pending September launch of Du Jour magazine with Niche Media founder Jason Binn at the helm and a tie-in with the Gilt Groupe and its millions of online shoppers.
Bloomberg Markets in February launched an upscale spin-off magazine called Pursuits that debuted with 30 ad pages.
More Deets?
The launch of a new men’s fashion magazine out of the Fairchild wing could spell fresh trouble for Details, the men’s fashion magazine edited by Daniel Peres.
Back in 2009, when Condé was shutting down five of its magazines and laying off 10 percent of its staff, Details was said to have narrowly dodged a bullet. It already has suspended publication once before, when it was moved out of Fairchild and into the Condé Nast group.
One of its champions back in 2009 was group publisher Bill Wackermann. Known as something of a Mr. Fixit for troubled magazines at Condé, Wackermann no longer has Details in his portfolio as he tries to fix more important properties such as Glamour.
Details has continued to struggle. In the first half of 2012, its ad pages were down 1.75 percent to 306 ad pages, following a dismal full-year 2011 when its ad pages plunged just over 10 percent.
Unlucky
Elsewhere in the house of Condé, there were rumblings about Lucky, the magazine that was recently given a major redesign by Editor-in-Chief Brandon Holley.
The hot rumor now is that the magazine will go all digital or at least drastically cut back from its monthly frequency to produce a quarterly and go digital with the rest of the schedule, insiders are hearing.
One source said that Holley is still very much in with the powers that be, but there is no denying that the mag is having trouble.
The most recent circulation figures before the redesign showed a flat circ picture, with 1,122,916 copies a month. It needed to send out 65,460 free copies to meet its rate-base promise to advertisers to deliver 1.1 million copies a month.
Its ad pages were down a troubling 17 percent in the first half of 2012, sinking to 404.4 ad pages.
That follows several years of diminishing ad sales, including a 2011 tally, which saw a 9 percent tumble to 1,119 ad pages.
One source said that Condé, which has been talking up digital, had toyed with the idea of going online — either exclusively or primarily — in the past and nixed it.
Holley, who was the editor of Jane Pratt’s magazine Jane when Condé pulled the plug back in 2007, spent several years working in the digital world, where she founded the women’s site Shine.
With that pedigree, she would seem well-poised to lead Lucky’s transition to digital, should the brass decide that is the way to go.
A Lucky spokeswoman said the rumors are unfounded.
Still, one insider said that the upcoming fall issues may be crucial in determining Lucky’s ultimate fate.
If advertisers show they are warming up to the redesign and reward it with more ad pages, then the magazine will have steered off the rocks.
The decision could come in August, which has always been a big month for surprises at Condé.