Mode Magazine to Stop Publishing
Posted on September 24, 2001
Mode magazine, a fashion monthly targeted to full-figured American woman, will stop publishing, announced Lewit and LeWinter/Freedom Magazines. The Mode shutdown comes as a result of difficult economic conditions resulting in unsuccessful attempts to find a buyer for the magazine.
``Freedom has an outstanding product and a strong audience in Mode magazine, but Mode has not reached a level of profitability in this very tough economic environment. In addition, Freedom magazines has recently focused its strategy on the business-to-business segment of the market and Mode did not fit in with that mix,'' said Colin Ungaro, President of Freedom Magazines, Inc.
The shutdown affects a staff of 38 people, who were told of the closing Monday afternoon. The October Mode issue, which has already been printed, will be the final issue of the magazine.
Mode has a present circulation of 600,000 subscribers and approximately 3.5 million readers. Julie Lewit-Nirenberg and Nancy Nadler-LeWinter, two publishing veterans of the high fashion magazine industry launched Mode in 1997. Freedom Magazines formed a partnership with the founders later that year, acquiring 50 percent of the property.
``Mode magazine is both a product and a philosophy. It has forever changed the way women feel about themselves and they way the world feels about them,'' said Julie Lewit and Nancy LeWinter.
``Mode was our only consumer title and we had no way to leverage it with any of our other magazine titles,'' Ungaro said. ``Our long-term strategy is to have magazine titles that focus on business-to-business.''
Headquartered in New York City, Freedom Magazines publishes 13 magazines and Internet sites in the fields of high technology, business trade and health and medicine. Freedom Magazines is a division of Freedom Communications, Inc., a privately held company based in Irvine, Calif. which publishes 28 daily newspapers, operates eight television broadcast stations and more than 60 Internet sites.