Hearst Magazines
International has given the gift of infinitely recyclable sex advice to the
Tibetan Buddhist, Central Asian country of Mongolia. What inspired this
unlikely market entry? Louis Vuitton!

Duncan Edwards, chief
executive of Hearst Magazines International, said Mongolia became an ideal
place to expand Cosmopolitan as the country”s economy modernized and the
business climate became more hospitable to foreign operations. He said the idea
to start a Mongolian edition came to him over dinner one night when an
executive from Louis Vuitton told him the company had just opened a store in
Ulaanbaatar.

The debut issue has Nicole
Scherzinger of The Pussycat Dolls on the cover, and, according to the Times, an article about Cosmo”s
history of advocating for women”s rights and a profile of former editor Helen
Gurley Brown. “We would love to translate more of the cover lines but we, like
Hearst, don”t read Khalkha Mongolian,” Edwards said. “We select editions
from time to time and have sections translated.”