Conde Nast Publications is shuttering Home & Garden magazine the New York Timesreports.
House & Garden had to contend with more than a dozen large national and regional magazines that cover much of the same terrain, like House Beautiful, Better Homes & Gardens, Traditional Home, Country Home and Home.
"The category as a whole is so crowded," said Kelly Foster, senior partner and print director at MindShare North America, a media planning and buying agency that is part of the WPP Group, adding that the magazines "get in each other's way."
That was particularly true for House & Garden, she said, as Conde Nast took the magazine into the luxury end of the market — but then ran into Conde Nast's own upscale publication, Architectural Digest. Conde Nast has two other entrants in the home design and furnishing field, Domino and Vogue Living, both started last year.
About 80 positions will be cut as a result of the magazine's closure. The may be the beginning of more print magazine gloom and doom. Charlie Rutman, chief executive for the North American operations of MPG, told the Times that the mags closing is "probably symptomatic of what we might see more of in the magazine industry."
