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Shopping magazines like Lucky are too big of a hit to be limited to the female domain. Enter Cargo, a manly mag for manly shoppers. (Updated: April 2004.) These days, guys like to shop. Or so at least assert fellow trend watchers who have feverishly been whooping it up all summer long for s: straight yet somewhat sophisticated guys who actually care about the way they dress, who are into grooming, and who are nice to women. (Yes, this is a very limited description of the phenomenon, but if you want to know more, just Google it and find more than 10,000 articles on this buzzword d’avant hier.) How fitting, therefore, that Lucky, the popular shopping-catalogue slash women’s magazine has spawned a male version called Cargo. Like Condé Nast’s ‘Lucky Magazine’, (whose September edition had no fewer than 195 ad pages), Cargo will be one big fashion, gadgets and grooming catalogue, disguised as a glossy magazine. Guys are supposed to take the magazine with them to the advertised stores, to facilitate quick and targeted buying. (To the left is a guy’s page in an old issue of female-oriented Lucky. Multiply by 200 and voila, there’s ‘Cargo’ 😉 Cargo’s first issue will premier in March 2004, with another five issues planned for the rest of that year. It will compete with new shopping mags for males like ‘Vitals’, a spin-off of the popular title ‘Details’, and with ‘Complex’ (tag line: Buy. Collect. Obsess), the incumbent in this new land of happy male shoppers. Complex is owned by Ecko Unlimited, a clothing company, which is an interesting trend in itself. The world of shopping will be in flux for a long time to come.

Opportunities

It does make sense. Guys in their late 20s and 30s are much more likely to be single, live on their own, and have enough leisure time and disposable income on their hands to work on their looks and style, especially now that women are rightfully expecting men to mirror the almost unattainable beauty standards that have long been set for women. Whatever magazine or store format (also check out last month’s item about London-based Microzine) is going to win, anyone who can instruct masses of young males on what and where to buy is going to be, well, RICH.