Lucky Magazine Finally, Completely Shuttered

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The plug has officially been pulled on Lucky Magazine, Mashable reports. The magazine's been in free fall for the past year as it was dropped by Condé Nast, laid off large groups of employees, halted print publications, and lost its all-important editor-in-chief Eva Chen, who jumped ship for Instagram. So, while the end of the magazine may not be a shock now, it's still a quick fall from grace for a magazine that was very widely read until just several years ago. As Mashable notes, at its peak Lucky had 1.1 million subscribers and was even named Magazine of the Year by Advertising Age in 2003.

Condé Nast, after failing to promote Lucky digitally, sold the publication to Beachmint, a company specializing in e-commerce that hoped to help Lucky transition into a platform where people could shop online. However, Mashable reports that the only reason Lucky even continued on this long is that Beachmint was holding out for a potential buyer. AOL was reportedly one of the suitors and even monitored Lucky's activity for several months. Lucky had even been hiring new editorial staffers with hopes of turning the publication around until just recently. It was only when a deal could not be struck with AOL that Beachmint finally decided to shutter the publication.

Sources tell Mashable that the magazine was essentially finished even when Chen was brought on as EIC in 2013. "It was too late, and she wasn't given a chance, given a dead animal," the source said. And the site was not a fit for Beachmint, which reportedly wanted writers to focus on shilling product above all else.

As of now, new content hasn't been uploaded to the site since October 30th and many of the products are either showing as sold out or waitlisted.