Conde Nast is climbing into bed with Hearst in a new joint venture that will handle the newsstand distribution for the once-bitter archrivals.
The new company will be called the Comag Marketing Group.
Hearst’s Frank Herrera will be the chairman and Hearst’s Mike Sullivan, will be the president and CEO of the new company.
Conde Nast’s flagship titles, such as Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair, tend to be more upscale and more targeted than larger-circulation Hearst titles such as Good Housekeeping and Redbook.
Conde Nast’s largest and most profitable mag is believed to be Glamour, which competes head-to-head with Hearst’s Cosmopolitan.
“This deal is fraught with potential conflicts of interest,” says one knowledgeable circulation source. “They compete against each other for editors and editors compete against each other for newsstand sales,” said the source.
“What are they going to do when they are each pushing the newsstand distributor to maximize their newsstand sales?”
“We’ll work it out,” insists Conde Nast spokeswoman Maurie Perl.
Her counterpart at Hearst, Deb Shriver, said, “We’ve done it jointly in Europe since 1977.”
The big loser is Times Distribution Services, a Time Inc./New York Times Co. joint venture handling magazine distribution for Conde Nast mags.