allure - Gawker

posts about #allure more →
Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
Conde Nast's September: Ouch
You Demand: Let Wired Live!
Remainders: It's So Hard To Look This Good
It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year To Mock 'Allure's Andrew Wilkes
Media Bubble: Exiled From The Cond Kingdom
Linda Wells: Total and Complete Failure
September Issues: Fall Fashion Weigh-In #3
Remainders: Can You Really Trust Jennifer Aniston's Publicist?
'Allure' Lifts Lindsay Up Where She Belongs

Your version of Internet Explorer is not supported. Please upgrade to the most recent version in order to view comments.

Dsmvwl Admin Promote to frontpage Approve user Ban user ×

OrfeoBullfinch
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
The fact that you aren't aware that both Bon App and Gourmet have their own websites, and are not affiliated with epicurious.com, is part of Conde's problem...
Reply

TheBusinessGuy promoted this comment OrfeoBullfinch was starred OrfeoBullfinch was unstarred

TheBusinessGuy
09/19/09

@OrfeoBullfinch: Right at the top of Epicurious, Gourmet and Bon App have logos and are called "our partners." The trouble is that the sites for the individual books were afterthoughts.
Reply

TheBusinessGuy was starred TheBusinessGuy was unstarred

PlacesLikeSuchAs
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
What about WWD?
Reply

TheBusinessGuy approved this comment PlacesLikeSuchAs was starred PlacesLikeSuchAs was unstarred

TheBusinessGuy
09/18/09

@PlacesLikeSuchAs: If they keep gutting and demoralizing the staff, who knows? I suspect that when the market recovers they will sell off the trade titles. Too plebeian for the 4TS crowd.
Reply

TheBusinessGuy was starred TheBusinessGuy was unstarred

Jezebabe
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
Three bridal mags? Really? Do those publish monthly? And I have to say I have never met anyone who reads Self, I'm not even sure why it exists. Isn't Cookie Lucky for moms? Is that doing well? Didn't Domino (interior decorating Lucky) and Cargo (men's Lucky) already fold a while ago? So many questions.
Reply

TheBusinessGuy promoted this comment Jezebabe was starred Jezebabe was unstarred

TheBusinessGuy
09/18/09

@Jezebabe: As I recall, Brides and Modern Bride alternate months. Elegant Bride, which is meant to be more upscale, is less than monthly but more than bi-monthly, if I remember correctly. Cookie is not Lucky; Cookie is meant to be way more upscale than Lucky. Think like Baby Vogue. And Cookie is doing well but it's one of the minor CN titles. Self exists to be on the table in your hair salon.
Reply

TheBusinessGuy was starred TheBusinessGuy was unstarred

TheBusinessGuy
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
The thing to remember here is that Conde has been glacial about changing with the times. The web strategy has been moronic at best, damaging at worst, with the basic idea being to preserve the print product at all costs. Can anyone tell me why style.com wasn't vogue.com, or why epicurious.com wasn't gourmet.com right from the start? Or why they haven't figured out a way to monetize the web beyond selling ads? (Whio has, but Conde had no interest in even trying.) And the mere continued presence of Teen Vogue says that Conde still hasn't realized that teens aren't reading ink on paper. Of course, the bloat is there, too: the million dollar editors won't be making much of a sacrifice: if Graydon took a 10% salary cut, how many jobs could be saved? To be fair, on the business side, Chuck T. could take a 10% cut and whole departments wouldn't have to go. Cut out some town cars, some first class airfares, some undeserved performance bonuses, and the livelihoods and lives of the little people won't be harmed. But McKinsey wouldn't be rehired if they told the bigwigs to cut their own salaries and perks. The upper level incompetents won't be hurt by this at all. I speak as a former CN guy.
Reply

TheBusinessGuy was starred TheBusinessGuy was unstarred

td9295
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
They can stop publishing ALLURE if and only if Linda Wells becomes Editor-In-Chief at VOGUE. I'm all Anna Wintour-ed out. Otherwise do not stop Allure. Somebody can crumble that COOKIE mag.
Reply

Phyllis Nefler promoted this comment td9295 was starred td9295 was unstarred

SuprabhaErato
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
To say that Vogue and Vanity Fair are profitable isn't exactly true. VF isn't a huge money-maker (not since the Suri Cruise cover), and Vogue depends on ad dollars - which were WAY down for the September issue. Anna and Graydon carry vanity salaries - Janice Min was the only other editor in the in the million dollar pool, and she worked her ASS off at US -- and it showed in newsstand sales.

If you want to build employee morale, you should see your executives as being just as invested as you are in the brand. That means you don't get to leave every day right at the end of the 9-5 workday with your private town car waiting downstairs.
Reply

Phyllis Nefler promoted this comment TheBusinessGuy approved this comment SuprabhaErato was starred SuprabhaErato was unstarred

Jasper Reardon
09/18/09

@SuprabhaErato: I was under the mistaken impression that "profit" was the difference between the money spent on a venture and the money made from it, provided the money made is more than the money spent. In these terms—which I think are pretty universally accepted—to say they are profitable is exactly true. Just because you know some numbers—ad and newsstand—are down, doesn't mean the profit dried up. It's just smaller.
Reply

Jasper Reardon was starred Jasper Reardon was unstarred

Cheap Shot
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
I have friends that work for Allure.com and Gourmet. The friend at Gourmet is worried and the one at Allure.com I'm sure will still have a job regardless.
Reply

Cheap Shot was starred Cheap Shot was unstarred

If_I_Had_a_Poodle
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
conde nast is still a private company, and can subsidize and allocate its money as it wishes, without being slaves to wall street's demands for more money every second

they can do what they want
Reply

If_I_Had_a_Poodle was starred

PamBeesley
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
Do they need 2 Golf mags? I think not.
Reply

Phyllis Nefler promoted this comment PamBeesley was starred PamBeesley was unstarred

snugbug
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
If Gourmet and Bon App do go under, it will be a tragedy. They have a very loyal subscription base and their shared website, epicurious.com, does a bang-on job of building on the print content with interactive features and web exclusives.

But no, let's kill a title that's been around since 1941 and keep that rag for (allegedly) straight hairdressers.
Reply

snugbug was starred snugbug was unstarred

taffy
09/18/09

@snugbug: I'm one of those loyal subcribers to Gourmet (I've even got a few issues datng back to the late '70's to mid '80's) and I would hate to see it fold but I guess the alternative would be to put their resources into the Epicurious website exclusively.
Reply

snugbug promoted this comment taffy was starred taffy was unstarred

hilkaryic
09/18/09

@taffy: They CAN NOT do that to me. I like using Epicurious, but the foodie-travel stories in Gourmet are so good.
Reply

Phyllis Nefler promoted this comment hilkaryic was starred hilkaryic was unstarred

rmric0.wedding.photographer.and.manny
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
You know you're doing something wrong when you can't make a magazine that's 90 percent ads profitable.
Reply

girlhowdy
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
Allure has been rumored to be up next for the guillotine since I worked at CN in the 1990s...
Reply

Phyllis Nefler promoted this comment girlhowdy was starred girlhowdy was unstarred

LaurieStrodeTheBoatAshore
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
OK I normally wouldn't do this but I feel I have to. As a proud member of the Firm, I have to defend the fact that what they offer is solid good sense.

The source article on both stem pieces revealed the following in terms of the Firm's findings in general:

"Keeping poor performers means that development opportunities for promising employees get blocked, so those subordinates don't get developed, productivity and morale fall, good performers leave the company, the company attracts fewer A players, and the whole miserable cycle keeps turning. McKinsey asked people who had worked for subpar managers what it was like, and they agreed strongly that the experience "prevented me from learning," "hurt my career development," "prevented me from making a larger contribution to the bottom line," and, ultimately, "made me want to leave the company."

It gets worse. Employees know who the underperformers are. They know that the top executives know who they are. So every day the top team fails to address the problem, it's sending a message: We're not up to managing this outfit. Refusing to deal with underperformers not only makes your best employees unhappy, but it also makes them think the company is run by bozos."

Seriously, does anyone really need McKinsey to tell you this? It may be a bitter pill to swallow, but it's common sense nonetheless.
Reply

Mohamed Ndiaye-Kingué
09/18/09

@LaurieStrodeTheBoatAshore: This thread is useless whithout a list of poor performers...let's start with :
1) Anna Wintour
2) Graydon Carter .
Reply

Jasper Reardon promoted this comment

Jasper Reardon
09/18/09

@Mohamed Ndiaye-Kingué: You're kidding, right? Regardless of what you think of their respective personalities, they both run (quite) profitable magazines. That's not generally what's considered a poor performer, in American Capitalism.
Reply

Jasper Reardon was starred Jasper Reardon was unstarred

lionel-mandrake
09/18/09

@Mohamed Ndiaye-Kingué: Not sure where you get your info from friend. By every metric used to measure the profitability of a media product, those are outrageously successful publications. They still sell very respectably at both the sub and newsstand levels.
Reply

snugbug approved this comment lionel-mandrake was starred lionel-mandrake was unstarred

td9295
09/18/09

@Mohamed Ndiaye-Kingué: I can't believe how many dead people have been on the cover of VF lately. I was really interested in learning about Health Leger's last days. The article became a story about his last film w/Terry Gilliam. Yeah, I think Graydon needs a kick in the ass too (along w/Wintour).
Reply

Phyllis Nefler promoted this comment td9295 was starred td9295 was unstarred

Dickdogfood
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
There's a magazine called Your Prom?

Does it publish monthly?
Reply

Dickdogfood was starred Dickdogfood was unstarred

Products Will Save Me
09/18/09

@Dickdogfood: In a perfect world, daily.
Reply

If_I_Had_a_Poodle
09/18/09

@Products Will Save Me: online they could do livestream
Reply

If_I_Had_a_Poodle was starred

NightElfMohawk
09/18/09

In reply to Will the Weakest Survive at Conde Nast?
So long as they never throw out or over-water-down Wired, I'm allright. All the other mags shown there, I could care less about.
Reply

Phyllis Nefler promoted this comment NightElfMohawk was starred NightElfMohawk was unstarred

Earlier discussions Other discussions Show all discussions Show featured discussions only Start a new discussion

SUBSCRIBE TO Gawker

Login

Reset Password

Register

Submit Your Comment