This major French women’s magazine has been placed in liquidation (it is ceasing its activities)

French and European companies are constantly announcing receiverships and liquidations, like the decoration brand Habitat or the brand Des Marques et Vous in women’s ready-to-wear. It is the turn of the press sector, already largely impacted by the increase in the cost of paper and digitalization, to see one of its pillars collapse.

This Monday June 10, 2024, the feminist media Causettewhich stopped publishing its monthly paper last fall to become 100% digital, was placed in liquidation “without continuing activity” And “looking for a buyer” For “be reborn as quickly as possible”, management announced in an Instagram post.

A digital transition

Founded in 2009 by Gregory Lassus-Debat, the magazine was taken over in 2018 by the Hildegarde group, also owner of the specialized publications Le Film français and Première. With a marked and deeply feminist editorial lineChat, from its motto “ more feminine of the brain than of the pads” was considered by The Times as “symbol of the French feminist renaissance” and favored investigations and reports as well as interviews always with a humorous and offbeat tone.

October 2023 marks a turning point for the magazine which will stop the production of its paper issues at n° 148, dated October 2023 to turn towards a 100% digital media. It’s for “deal with rising costs” and the change in reading habits that management had undertaken this digitalization. A transition which obviously was not enough for the feminist media to survive, since a judicial liquidation without continuation of activity was declared by the Paris Commercial Court on June 6.

Judicial liquidation without continuation of activity

“It is with a heavy heart that we send you this letter” immediately announces the direction in the Instagram post of June 10 on the official account of the magazine intended to inform readers of the judicial liquidation without continuation of activity. Since June 6, the date on which the procedure was decided, “the site is therefore no longer updated and the work of the employees has ended.” A brutal shutdown for the media which since last September has been fighting for a digital transition. Resources put at the service of the web, which unfortunately would not have been sufficient to maintain activity, say the decision-makers: “By mobilizing all employees on the web, the title was able, in eight months, to be deployed digitally, leading to renewed enthusiasm on its site and on its social networks. We regret having lacked the time and resources to make things sustainable and having to stop there for the moment.”

But Causette doesn’t seem to let it get her down. “We are convinced that Causette is indispensable in the French media landscape because of its impertinence, its progressivism, its feminism (…) all the more so at a time when the far right is achieving historic scores in the elections and ‘always imposes itself more and more in the media field’, it was written the day after the rise of the RN to the Europeans. The media suggests a desire to “find a buyer to work alongside them and be reborn as quickly as possible” in order to continue “to fight.”