Pop quiz: What do digital publishing and the business of fashion have to do with each other?
Digiday branches out from media to fashion with Glossy, a new business site
Who else is going to write about Ralph Lauren’s internet-connected fitting rooms?
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
Trick question: Not that much!
That’s why the people behind Digiday, the very smart publication that makes money covering ad blocking and declining CPMs, is launching Glossy, a new publication that covers Ralph Lauren’s internet-connected fitting rooms and Sephora’s face-scanning, makeup-recommending gizmo.
The premise of Glossy is that the fashion and luxury industries are just starting to adapt to technology, just as the media business has been doing for the past decade (or more). The publication is aimed at people who need to figure that out, like executives at fashion brands, ad agencies and high-end retail, says Digiday Media CEO Nick Friese.
“The people on the inside who believe that transformation is afoot — those are the people we want to reach,” he said.
While lots of publishers cater to people who like looking at things that come out of the fashion and luxury industries, the pool of people covering the business end of it isn’t that deep. Penske Media has a stable of publications that do it, most notably Women’s Wear Daily. So does Business of Fashion.
Glossy will take on a different subject than Digiday, but it will share plenty of DNA. The new property will be run by Digiday managing editor Shareen Pathak and Digiday reporter Hilary Milnes. And it will also have the same business model: An ad-supported site aimed at an influential but small-scale audience (Digiday’s site attracts a million visitors a month) augmented with other revenue streams like conferences and, perhaps, a paid offering.
That model seems to be working out. The company, formed in 2008, is now profitable on more than “eight figures” in annual revenue, Friese says.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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