Luxury fashion e-zine ZooZoom is looking to the world of print for help in turning a profit, which it has been unable to do in the eight years since its ill-timed founding during the dot-com bust at the turn of the 21st century.

But if ZooZoom's bottom line does not enter the black by the end of 2008, it could be lights out, revealed Mike Hartley, ZooZoom's chief executive officer. "We'll have to seriously reconsider what we're doing," Hartley stated. "We would have hoped to have turned a profit by now."

In pursuit of the elusive black ink, ZooZoom has begun making pitches to print publishers to partner in launches of additional e-zines, ideally creating a network of titles dedicated to subjects such as cars — possibly with the name VaVoom; music, and celebrities, said Hartley. "We've approached Hachette Filipacchi [in August]," he noted of the company that publishes, Elle, Woman's Day, Car and Driver and Road & Track, among other magazines.

Anne Janas, senior vice president, corporate communications, at Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., said, "Because we are always talking about joint ventures, we never comment on these kinds of discussions."

Hartley noted he is also considering approaching Condé Nast titles and independent publications such as Dwell.

"We don't have ZooZoom in mind as a place for 20 million unique users," Hartley related. "We see various sites with roughly four million users in [our] medium-term future." Four million visitors are a long way off, however, unless ZooZoom can generate enough advertising revenue to accelerate its marketing effort. To date, absent a traditional marketing campaign, search-engine listings and word of mouth have drawn an average of 150,000 unique users a month, by the media property's own measure. (That figure falls below the monthly minimum of 390,000 needed to register on at least one rating agency's radar, Nielsen/NetRatings.)

Fifteen fashion and beauty advertisers have made appearances in the online magazine since its relaunch in 2005: Chanel, Neiman Marcus, Net-a-Porter, Redux Charles Chang-Lima, Sass & Bide, Custo Barcelona, Kai Kühne, Deborah Marquit, Citizen:Citizen, L'Oréal, Clinique, Allure, Inimitable, Rouge Allure and Sublimage.