I recently chatted with Charles Dominick, who gave a talk at Corporate United’s Synergy event in Chicago. He recently published a thoughtful post on his blog in late April that suggested Purchasing Magazine’s demise can teach us something about insolvent suppliers. Charles opines, “evaluating Purchasing Magazine’s demise made me realize that there are at least two different ways that companies (i.e., suppliers) approach their last days. The first is when they desperately scale back operations and lay off employees. And the second is when there’s no warning at all.”
Purchasing’s demise was most certainly in the latter camp. As Charles writes, they “had really beefed up their online journalism, featuring lots of ‘web only’ content. They had launched, and then subsequently improved, their PurchasingBIZconnect social network. They had retained all of their highly talented editors. They introduced a number of bloggers. There was no external sign of to-the-bone cost cutting.” All of this suggested a healthy business. Yet the parent company, Reed, opted to shut down Purchasing because they wanted to get out of this particular area of trade publications, along with over two dozen other titles.
Charles gives one opinion here: “Apparently, the publication was too small for the parent to bother with, so it just shut Purchasing down.” This may or many not be true…
