RIP Maxim UK.

Beer, babes and good-bye for UK Maxim
Sir Felix is closing the print edition of the title
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Apr 2, 2009

The concept was nifty, playing upon the scruffy tastes of Britain's young men, and Felix Dennis did so well at it that many think he invented the entire laddie category of men's magazines when he launched Maxim in 1995.

In truth, it was already booming. Dennis just gave it more oomph with features on beer, babes and bathroom humor.

Now it's over.

The original Maxim is folding, it was announced today in London, its legacy living on as a web site. The last print issue goes out later this month. In its place on UK newsstands will appear the American edition, launched in 1997, which Dennis sold off several years ago.

At its peak in 2000, the UK Maxim reported a circulation of more than 300,000 but by late last year that had shrunk to under 50,000.

It was a slow but sure decline for the title, as well as for so many similar titles, trailing down each year as more and more young men moved online.

“The community that buys those magazines is moving to the internet,” Lorna Tilbian, media analyst at Numis Securities, a London investment bank, told Media Life almost two years ago. And by then circulation for men's title was already tumbling, falling 14.4 percent in the second half of 2006. Hardest hit were the lad titles.

But other forces were at work as well.

There was a flush of new titles, many weeklies, that overcrowded the market, making a shakeout inevitable. Almost all have seen their circulations tumble.

The few magazines to report gains were more upscale, traditional men's titles like Men’s Health and GQ, which remained above the fray.

But also hurting lad titles like Maxim was the rise more recently of free men's titles with far larger circulations, such as Sport and ShortList.

As freebies, handed out at train stations and the like, they didn't need to run racy covers to drive sales, making them more appealing to advertisers as well as readers.

The lads craze in the U.S. market has similarly ended. Maxim is still published but ad pages are well down. Sister title Stuff and arch-rival FHM folded two years ago.