Associated New Media to Replace Its U.K. Women’s Portal

[London, ENGLAND] Just a month after confirming the relaunch
of its women’s portal CharlotteStreet, U.K. publisher
Associated New Media (ANN) announced Friday it will replace it
with a new one named femail.co.uk.

ANN, part of the group that owns the Daily Mail and the
London Evening Standard, said it wants to tie in the new
portal with the popular Femail section of the Daily Mail.

“We conducted external research with focus groups who had
overwhelming connection to the Femail brand,” said
ANM’s Executive Editor Avril Williams.

The decision to scrap CharlotteStreet appears to be have
been taken with the twin factors of branding and synergies
with print media uppermost in everyone’s mind. With
1.5 million page impressions a month, CharlotteStreet is
not really another dotcom failure.

A month ago, Ted Verity, ANM’s executive editor, was
talking about “building on the success of CharlotteStreet.”
He said ANN was hiring a new team of journalists in order
to provide a more comprehensive service.

Launched in October 1999 and backed by US $14.4 million,
CharlotteStreet faced competition from Handbag.com, the
women’s shopping portal from Hollinger Digital and Boots
the Chemist, and from EMAP’s women’s site New Woman.

However, the stiffest competition — which will affect
femail.co.uk as well — currently comes from IPC’s Beme
with its 0.15 million users, and from Freeserve’s i-circle
with its estimated million users.

U.K. supermarket chain Tesco also announced recently that
it is putting US $18 million into iVillage, the U.S. women’s
portal which intends to enter the U.K. market
(see

International News, July 19, 2000
).

ANN says it will launch femail.co.uk within the next
two months.

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