Partner With Us

Teenage girl-focused retailer dELiA*s Corp. has divested another non-core Internet property, this time with a sale of "substantially" all of its gURL.com assets to special interest publisher Primedia.

Stephen Kahn, the CEO of dELiA*s, said the sale of the teen-girl site is the company's final step in its plans to divest non-core businesses and money-losing properties. It also marks the end of a chapter for dELiA*s, which helped write the book on how to market to teenage girls online and off.

The gRUL sale follows other divestitures of its properties, such as the sale of TheSpark.com and SparkNotes.com to Barnes & Noble. The company was expected to wind down its Storybook Heirlooms subsidiary by this month.

Right now, the company's plan is to focus on building the dELiA*s brand in every channel, such as catalog, Internet and retail, Kahn said. And that means building on only properties that carry the dELiA*s name.

"The gURL staff has built a great online media property and we are pleased that they are moving forward with a strong, complementary partner" in Primedia, he said.

The gURL.com assets play right into Primedia's plans to boost its online presence and integrate its teen- targeted publications such as Tiger Beat, Teen Beat, BOP, Seventeen and Your Prom with online marketing efforts.

Fred Seibert of Primedia's Teen Internet Initiative group said the plan is to expand the group's new media presence by leveraging gURL.com's content across existing teen Internet sites, "in a cost-effective and time efficient manner."

The gURL sale also comes as Primedia announces another deal that will help it manage its online/offline content, in this case with Web publishing outfit Accumedia, in which Primedia has also taken an investment stake.

Primedia plans to use Accumedia's platform within its Wedding Network/ModernBride.com family of Web sites for starters. "Accumedia has developed a powerful technology platform that addresses the specific Web challenges of bridging off-line and online magazine properties," said Daniel E. Aks, chief operating officer of Primedia's Consumer Media and Magazine Group.