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Fast Company, Inc. Face $10MM Loss, Ad Dept. Must Make It Up

In an internal memo to staff of Inc. and Fast Company, purchased last year by Mansueto Ventures from Gruner + Jahr USA Publishing, CEO John Koten describes a $10 million combined loss in 2005, BusinessWeek reports.

 

In what the article calls a “stunningly frank memo,” Koten went on to outline his plans for resolving the situation. The goal for upcoming years is to halve last year’s loss in 2006, and halve that again in 2007. The success in doing that rests in the hands of the advertising department, the memo stated. “Inc. and Fast Company also need to achieve significant increases in ad sales on an issue-to-issue basis to hit our target.”

Business magazines in general struggled with ad sales in 2005, with ad revenue for BusinessWeek down 9 percent and Fortune down 4 percent, for example.