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June 7, 2010

Scarlet magazine closes after distributor goes into admin

By Oliver Luft

Three editorial jobs are understood to have been lost through the closure of woman’s lifestyle magazine Scarlet – itself a knock-on from its parent company’s distributor going into administration.

Interactive Publishing announced last week that Scarlet Publishing, the subsidiary which published the monthly magazine, and Trojan Publishing, another subsidiary, would be going into liquidation.

The last issue of Scarlet is understood to have reached newsstands last week.

This followed an announcement from Interactive last month that its magazine distributor, the Magazine Marketing Company, had gone into administration depriving it of more than £700,000 of newsstand revenue.

In order to generate cash following MMC’s administration and to clear dept with Barclay’s Bank, Interactive Publishing sold Vitality Publishing, the subsidiary which publishes gay lifestyle title Attitude and Women’s Fitness magazines, to Financial One Securities for £421,616.

Interactive also withdrew its share listings from the Plus Market as a result of a lack of resources at the company.

Press Gazette understands that the closure of Scarlet led to the editor, art director and features editor losing their jobs, while other staff members have moved to work elsewhere in the business.

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Interactive continues to publish Sailing Today, through subsidiary Marine Media, and three hairdressing titles through another subsidiary, ScissorHands.

In April, Interactive sold its 30 adult titles – to instead focus solely on lifestyle brands – for a sum which could rise to £1m, a loss of approximately £400,000 on the book value of the titles.

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