Both print magazines faced a buzzsaw even before the internet, forums, and Facebook overwhelmed them. Consolidation in the industry meant less advertisers. The great recession took out a few more advertisers. Continued consolidation took out even more. The remaining advertisers would get the most benefit from new subscribers and reaching out to new cleaners and restorers. You can't exactly spend lots of money reaching out to new FREE subscribers and grow your overall subscription list when your revenue is shrinking each year as your advertising shrinks. Then came the brave new internet world and well, it was likely inevitable.
Many here are so right though in that Jeff Cross did everything he could to keep the print version of Cleanfax down to earth, relevant, and useful. Looking forward to hearing more about his new adventures. I appreciate all that Jeff, and Cleanfax have done for our industry.
Cleanfax represented a place where the industry was represented. It served as a great conduit of useful, professionally edited, and mostly fact checked information (although me and that green guy consultant are eventually going to have to have it out over that cold water extraction thing - clean the carpet in a rental or pizza restaurant and tell me then how cold water is a greener way to go). It contributed many great things to the growth of our industry. Like some guy I always looked up to said - "change is inevitable, growth is optional."