Conde Nast calls time on men's style website as McKinsey brought in

Chuck Townsend, chief executive of Conde Nast, yesterday issued a memo telling staff "we must realign Conde Nast to be a successful business in an emerging economy that is now predicted to be painfully slow in recovering".

McKinsey, Townsend and a Conde Nast team will review all areas of the company and "develop new perspectives on optimizing our approach to business, growing revenues, and enhancing our brand assets".

It emerged yesterday that Conde Nast is to ditch its online-only men's brand Men.Style.com, which is the home of GQ and Details magazine online. The site will close in October and Conde Nast will instead focus on GQ.

GQ currently has a section on Men.style.com, but it will now become the flagship and details will also have its own website.

Sarah Chubb, Conde Nast Digital president told AdAge that GQ's brand strength was the strongest at Conde Nast and it made sense to consolidate under the GQ brand.

Chubb said: "We had a hard time branding it on its own away from Style.com."

The move may lead to a rethink of the company's other web-only brands that house magazine content, such as women's fashion site Style.com, food site Epicurious.com and travel site Concierge.com.

The Newhouse family-owned magazine empire has been retrenching following the downturn in the economy and the advertising market.

In April Conde Nast closed down its two-year old business magazine Portfolio, on which Newhouse had lavished resources.

In the previous 12 months it had also closed House & Garden, Jane, Cargo, Vitals and Domino.

However it relaunched technology monthly Wired in the UK in April and launched fashion monthly Love in the UK in February.