In 2000, IVillage spent nearly three times as much money on sales and marketing as it gained in revenues. The company had enough money to last just five months. To right its ship, iVillage in July replaced its original CEO, co-founder Candice Carpenter, with Doug McCormick, who had led the women's cable TV network Lifetime Television for six years. Looked inward McCormick eliminated jobs, reduced the sales and marketing budget, and turned the company's attention inward. IVillage began heavily promoting its content on its own Web site, hoping to lure visitors to other pages within its site.
Analysts expect the companies to keep running two separate Web sites.
Combining the two leading women's sites under one corporate roof should help their chances of survival, analysts said. According to iVillage, only 15 percent of the visitors to each site overlap. Their combined traffic would propel iVillage into one of the 20 most-visited properties on the Web. Sharing a sales force and an editorial staff could cut costs further. Yet some people question whether the concept of a women's Web is viable.