The developers do not have enough strength to launch the next phase, according to a press release from Profile Publishing. It has not been possible to find a partner to support the project in recent months. Zurich-based Profile Publishing launched Eco Life in August 2008 as a supplement to the NZZ am Sonntag. Its success encouraged the makers to publish a Lohas magazine six times a year, according to the press release. Due to the collapse of the financial markets and the immediate economic downturn, the decision was made at the beginning of 2009 to launch Eco Life anyway, but with a somewhat leaner concept.

In order to operate the magazine in an economically sustainable manner, further development steps would now be required, such as increasing the number of issues to ten to twelve per year, expanding the scope and further optimizing distribution. These would be the prerequisites for being able to implement active reader marketing to build up a subscriber base. According to the press release, Profile Publishing is too small a publishing house to be able to drive this development forward independently. Despite an intensive search in recent months, no partnership could be found to put the magazine on a sustainable long-term footing.

Karin Stich, Head of Profile Publishing, says: "If we saw a real opportunity, there would be no question as to whether we would continue. However, the upheavals in the media industry, coupled with the economic outlook in some sectors, give us little hope. We want to change the situation while we can still make our own decisions. We are reducing our own publishing program and increasingly offering corporate publishing as well as publishing consulting and management."