In an effort to refocus on its consumer brands, Condé Nast is selling Fairchild Fashion Media—owner of B-to-B publications Women’s Wear Daily, Footwear News and Beauty, Inc.—to Penske Media Corporation for $100 million, according to The New York Times.
Condé Nast will retain ownership of Fairchild’s consumer-facing brands Style.com and NowManifest. Fairchild CEO and president Gina Sanders will remain with Condé parent company Advance Publications “in a new role to be disclosed shortly,” WWD reported.
“Today’s announcement reflects our strategy of investing resources in our core consumer brands,” Condé CEO Chuck Townsend told WWD. “Condé Nast has enjoyed unprecedented growth in our core consumer print, digital, mobile, video, television and film development businesses; this sale underscores our commitment to accelerating growth in these areas.”
Existing Fairchild staffers will move to Penske when the deal closes next month, but Condé did not specify whether any employees would be expected to relocate to Penske’s Los Angeles headquarters.
Penske Media owns upwards of 20 media brands including Deadline.com, HollywoodLife and Variety, which it purchased early last year. After acquiring the beleaguered trade publication, Penske proceeded to shutter its daily broadsheet, The Daily Variety, and relaunched Variety.com minus its former paywall. (Variety's print magazine still publishes weekly.)