Asian Magazines

Japanese model Moe Oshikiri is the cover girl for the last issue (December 2016) of AneCan Magazine. The fashion magazine will suspend its publication after running for a decade because of business reasons. Poor sales, to put it boldly.

Oshikiri was also the cover girl for the first issue of AneCan in 2007. So it’s fitting that she’s the one who brings down the curtain on the magazine.

AneCan targeted women in mid to late twenties who have “graduated” from reading CanCam, its sister magazine for younger women and college students.

The challenge

CanCam is still running after 35 years though (first published in November 1981.) It’s an amazing feat but the future looks grim for fashion magazines worldwide, with the shift of interest and competition from internet publications etc.

To survive, the magazines have to build a strong branding with solid online presence and to venture globally. The later is something the Japanese media have fallen behind in the past decade, it’s so difficult for non-Japanese to reach their contents.