On Tuesday, Conde Nast International will launch Vogue Business, a fashion industry title that is aimed at professionals, after a turbulent couple of years for the publisher.
Vogue Business will start as a newsletter, rather than a website, aiming for a niche audience over having broad reach.
The new magazine will be run separately from the main Vogue title with its own editorial team and will cover the impact of technology on the industry, trends in manufacturing, marketing and hiring as well as broader issues such as climate change and geopolitics.
"In a consolidating media landscape, the launch of a new global title is a rare thing", said Wolfgang Blau, President of Conde Nast International," in an emailed to CNBC Monday. The company has been beta testing the newsletter with people in 29 countries, Conde Nast said.
The glossy magazine industry is no longer what it was, where sleek printed titles would be funded by advertisers keen to reach their aspirational audiences. Now, people read news and features and watch videos on the likes of Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook, which are more attractive to advertisers because of the data they have on users. Legacy publishers have had to catch up, and many are now putting their titles behind paywalls.
Meanwhile, consolidation in the industry has seen Rolling Stone sold to Penske Media in December 2017 and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff buying Time magazine for $190 million last September. BuzzFeed is reported to be planning to cut about 15 percent of its workforce, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal last week.
Conde Nast put Brides, Golf Digest and W magazines up for sale last year, and reportedly lost $120 million in 2017. It is currently restructuring, having combined its U.S. and international divisions, and is looking for a new global CEO. It will put all of its titles behind paywalls by the end of 2019 — several including Vanity Fair and Wired currently allow people a number of free articles per month, and the subscription model will be extended to others such as Vogue, GQ and Glamour, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.
Vogue Business will be edited by Lauren Indvik, the former head of news and features at Vogue International, who said in a release emailed to CNBC. "Our journalism is designed for maximum impact and accessibility, making it easy to understand key ideas at a glance, and to enable fashion leaders to make the decisions that will grow and future-proof their businesses and careers."
Vogue Business will compete with the likes of Business of Fashion, an industry website that started as a blog by Imran Ahmed in 2007 and now has subscribers including Amazon Fashion, Burberry and conglomerates LVMH and Kering. Other fashion industry magazines include Women's Wear Daily, a title founded in 1910 and Drapers, founded in 1887.
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