…as Condé Nast axes standalone GQ Active

Condé Nast is withdrawing GQ Active as a standalone title on the newsstand following disappointing sales.

The withdrawal of a Condé Nast title is highly unusual. The magazine will be bound onto parent title GQ as a three-monthly supplement instead. The November issue will be the last standalone GQ Active.

As a result, GQ Active associate publisher Jacqui Euwe has left the company and is being replaced by ad director Jill Doward. She will report to Peter Stuart, publishing director of GQ and GQ Active.

Editor Simon Mills will be replaced by Simon Tiffin, former deputy editor of GQ Active. But Mills will still have input to the magazine as contributing editor.

Stuart says: “GQ Active was selling 65,000 copies but we needed to sell more and were hoping to sell about 80,000. This move makes the magazine profitable overnight.”

Condé Nast has already reduced GQ Active from ten to four editions a year. It will be bound onto GQ for the first time in February 1999.

Jackie Almeida, director at CIA Medianetwork, says “There are two business issues. Firstly, Condé Nast is consolidating in a market that is showing incredible growth. Secondly, it is putting the GQ Active title into the main brand GQ, which was down by four per cent year on year, to give it added value.”

In the most recent Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, for January to June this year, Rodale Press’ Men’s Health magazine saw a circulation rise of 30.5 per cent to 245,659.

Meanwhile, NatMags this week launches its men’s fitness title, ZM.