Sunsetting Fonts.com etc.

Ray Larabie

I got an email from Monotype informing affiliates that they're sunsetting their non-MyFonts sites. Has this been announced elsewhere? Is it just those three sites?

We’ve made the decision to discontinue several of our legacy sites which includes Linotype.com, Fontshop.com, and Fonts.com throughout the next year.

Laurence Penney

Wow, in Linotype’s Events section there’s an article dated August 10, 1994:

1st International Type Design Contest

James Puckett

I’m not surprised by any of these. They want people to forget Linotype and Fontshop and roll that brand equity over into MyFonts. Fonts.com should be an incredibly valuable domain but the design has been shit ever since their big hyped redesign which probably sucked all the value out. It won’t be long before typography.com just points to myfonts.com, too.

Ray Larabie

I've sensed for a while that fonts.com might shut down. When they updated their database, they didn't fully merge it with myfonts.com. I have many fonts from fonts.com that aren't on myfonts.com, and I can't update them on the Monotype platform. If they wanted to keep fonts.com, they would've integrated this feature. James also noticed the site seemed outdated. I found broken links on their sales pages last year. I'm not surprised they're going to close them, and I wonder why it took so long. While these brands have value, a poor website can drive customers away. Maintaining mutliple sites with almost identical products always seemed like a money pit to me. They probably could have made mutiple front ends for MyFonts and it might have been cheaper than trying to jury rig these disparate sites for all these years.

Jens Kutilek

https://www.myfonts.com/pages/closure-announcement-faq

Chris Lozos

Perhaps the name Monotype sounds too much like monoply for them and they wanted to segway from it :-)

JoyceKetterer

I think it makes sense for Monotype to consolidate their brand under one name, and I think it is good for the rest of us.  The point of multiple brands is to confuse customers into thinking they are dealing with different companies.  

Thomas Phinney

If I were Monotype I would have merged these sites already.

In the short term it is work and pain to merge them, what with the need to migrate order histories. But in the long term the efficiency gains will be huge.

I hope the previous foundry legacies are preserved and celebrated as much as possible, but eventually merging them into the behemoth is part of what one expects from the acquisition process. Ah well!

Dave Crossland

I hope as Laurence says the historical meta page are well archived 

Ray Larabie

@JoyceKetterer Multiple brands can be beneficial when targeting distinct customer segments without much overlap. For instance, Old Navy, The Gap, and Banana Republic successfully cater to different market segments. The same goes for beauty brands like Clinique, MAC, and Smashbox. However, Volkswagen Group's approach with multiple luxury brands (Bentley, Bugatti, Porsche, Lamborghini) can seem excessive, but they have historical brand value to maintain. If the Monotype brands had been structured similarly—MyFonts as "The Gap," FontShop as "Banana Republic," and a new brand similar to Creative Market representing "Old Navy"—it would have been logical. But, they ended up with one "Gap" and multiple "Banana Republics," which muddled their market distinction.

JoyceKetterer

@Ray Larabie I've never really thought that consumer goods analogies work for font licensing sales.  While it is true that different sales platforms seem to have different customer bases, and a font that does poorly on one may do well on the other, licensing is a complicating factor.  A company like monotype wants to use their EULA for all of the platforms.  They are then essentially selling the same thing on all platforms.

Dave Crossland

The Eula is critical, second only to the typeface itself, and that's where the segmentation would make sense. Gotham remains only available on typography.com and myfonts search results page for it redirects there. 

Mark Simonson

Are you sure about that? It looks like you can buy it on MyFonts.com.

JoyceKetterer

I have heard anecdotally from clients about a year ago that Monotype was testing different EULA terms on different platforms. Most wont notice but those who did were really upset about it.

Dave Crossland

Sorry Mark, I'm suggesting that's what they should have done, instead of the current vaporizing of brand value. 

I am also speculating against different Eula terms 

Mark Simonson

Ah, okay. I misunderstood. And I agree.

Nadine Chahine

The company page doesn't even mention the Linotype name. The brand is well and truly dead and it's very frustrating the lack of support in leveraging the value of that brand and everything it represented. And I say this as someone who was in charge of Linotype's branding, and having had a front row seat to the decimation of all that history.

Jacques Le Bailly

I started my type design career as an intern at Linotype in 1998 🥲

Dave Crossland

I must assume that the brand-word meant zero to the people making the decision, and to the random people they polled.

My experience is that since everyone who's anyone reads and authors rich text, they all think they know something about type. Oh well