Broke fashion publisher closes down Camille Alarcon
After only 18 months in operation Brugi, the company which publishes niche fashion titles Followgentlemen and Followfor women, has closed down.
The company went into receivership on Friday, September 8, after talks with four potential partners broke down.
The owner of the company Bruno Giagu last year resurrected and modernised his iconic fashion titles from the 1980s, but with inadequate capital and a lack of promotion, it could no longer continue to operate.
Followgentlemen editor, Dominic Cadden, said the administrators gave them a chance to start up again under another company name, but time ran out on Monday.
“I wasn’t particularly surprised about the news because I was much more close to the financial side of the business than others, apart from the publisher.
“The big problem was the business was under capitalised from the start. In the first year [Bruno] spent so much in printing it was only in the second year he realised he could have done it for half the price,” Cadden said.
However, he adds while the women’s magazine Follow struggled to find its place in the saturated women’s market, there was certainly room for its male counterpart Followgentlemen which was selling around 9,000 to 10,000 an issue.
“There was a lot of excitement over the men’s magazine and the national advertising manager even suggested just publishing the men’s magazine and dropping Follow.”
Cadden, who at one stage even considered investing his own money into the company to keep it afloat, is presently working as a freelancer.
