Hard times turns lad mag into Stuff-ing for Maxim

Like many trends, the trajectory growth of "lads" mags aimed at the young male audience has been steep going up and appears to be steep coming down. A rumour has been reported in Mediaweek that Stuff magazine is essentially to disappear, absorbed as a special section entitled Stuff for Men into its stablemate Maxim (October to be Stuff's last issue). The closure would bring the troubles in the category into high relief.

The titles were only recently purchased by Kent Brownridge and the Quadrangle Group from founder Felix Dennis and the deal is to close next week. Dennis publishing has already been renamed the Alpha Media Group.

Both titles were doing better than rivals FHM and Cargo, both of which folded. But Maxim and Stuff have had a bleak time of it in recent years: Maxim reported 930 ad pages last year, down from 1,223 in 2002. Stuff had 615, down from 756 pages. Single copy sales in the last half of 2006 fell 12.1% for Maxim (to about 450,000) and 34.9% for Stuff (to about 176,000).

Stuff originally started as a primarily a gear, girls 'n' toys book, a defensive gesture to protect Maxim from FHM. Once FHM folded, the new owners have apparently decided to focus their investment in Maxim and the music title Blender. It has been widely speculated that the category of magazines aimed at the young male market was over-saturated and something had to give. Stuff is the latest to do so.