F+W Media, publisher of a plethora of affinity- titles including Deer & Deer Hunting and Trapper & Predator Caller, has announced it is liquidating.

The company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy papers on March 10, while declaring “business as usual” while going through the process.

According to the filing, the company has saw magazine subscriptions drop from 33.4 million in 2015 to 21.5 million in 2018, with advertising revenues falling commensurately, from $20.7 million in 2015 to $13.7 million.

According to the Chapter 11 explanations, F+W has about $ 2.5 million in cash, but $105.2 million in outstanding debt. F+W CEO Greg Osberg explained in the filing that, after exploring all possible options, selling all its assets was the only way to pay creditors.

That sale will be bifurcated, with the communities division including all its magazine properties, and F+W books, which publishes 120 titles and has more than 2,100 titles in its catalog.

What this means, in a nutshell, is that the 54 or so print or print/digital titles will either find themseves under new ownership, or cease to exist. The outdoor titles include Deer & Deer Hunting, Trapper & Predator Caller, and their respective online entities.

Their Lifestyles group includes Family Tree, Horticulture, Popular Woodworking, and, Sky & Telescope. And their F+W Crafts include a variety of titles for almost everything from Beadwork to Quiltmaker or Sewandso.

F+W’s failure comes despite its having appeared to have successfully grown via acquisitions. The most recent were Aspire Media in 2012 and New Track Media in 2014. However, problems became obvious in 2018 when F+W sold off Blade Magazine and its related events- the BLADE Show and BLADE Show West to Caribou Media.

Reading the bankruptcy filing uncovers a long list of reasons for the company’s failure. But the primary cause appears to have been a decision in 2008 to focus its energies into selling content and other products in its “communities” from various company-owned websites. That shift was made to combat the sales decline of magazines. But the switch to digital apparently led to a “host of problems” summarized in the filing.

Here’s the cautionary tale in their own words:

“In connection with this new approach, the Company took on various additional obligations across its distribution channel, including purchasing the merchandise it would sell online, storing merchandise in leased warehouses, marketing merchandise on websites, fulfilling orders, and responding to customer service inquiries. Unfortunately, these additional obligations came at a tremendous cost to the Company, both in terms of monetary loss and the deterioration of customer relationships.

"As a consequence of this shift in strategic approach, the Company was required to enter into various technology contracts which increased capital expenditures by 385% in 2017 alone. And, because the Company had ventured into fields in which it lacked expertise, it soon realized that the technology used on the Company’s websites was unnecessary or flawed, resulting in customer service issues that significantly damaged the Company’s reputation and relationship with its customers. By example, in 2018 in the crafts business alone, the Company spent approximately $6 million on its efforts to sell craft -commerce and generated only $3 million in revenue.”

Publisher’s Weekly is reporting that investment bank Greenhill & Co. has been retained to shop the book business- and is in contact with “thirteen potential suitors”. FTI Consulting is working on the sale of the magazine side.

As always, we’ll keep you posted.

—Jim Shepherd