Digiday, the company best known for its concise coverage of the shifting media industry, announced on Monday plans to extend its reporting to the realms of fashion and luxury with a new publication called Glossy.
Glossy, which officially launches today, will bring to the likes of Gucci, DKNY and Dior a central tenet of Digiday’s coverage: A focus on both buyers and sellers. For the media business, that means chronicling advertising agencies and the publications they do business with. For fashion, that means covering major commercial brands along with publications and advertisers.
The publication will be led on the editorial side by Shareen Pathak, the managing editor of Digiday, who will be joined by two other staffers to start: Hilary Milnes, a senior reporter, and Bethany Biron, a junior reporter. Pathak says Glossy will rely on contributions from staffers at Digiday in advance of future growth.
So, why Fashion? Pathak says it’s a natural fit for Digiday because highbrow designers are facing the same big challenge media companies are grappling with: Harnessing ever-changing technology to get their messages out to consumers.
“There are a lot of parallels in fashion and luxury,” Pathak said in an email. “These brands face a new world where technology and digital needs to be used so they can grow. We’re dedicating Glossy to chronicling this modernization of these industries. It’s an exciting time to be doing this: consumers and their shopping behaviors are being transformed, the industry is being challenged, and the very definition of what it is to be a luxury brand is changing.”
Glossy will also bring events and conferences — a staple of Digiday’s business model — to the world of high fashion. In doing so, it joins the ranks of competitors including The New York Times, which puts on an annual international luxury conference.
Glossy is the first editorial spinoff for Digiday, which was founded in 2008 by CEO Nick Friese as a small events company. In 2011, Digiday shifted its attention to growing its future-of-media publication, which now rakes in about 2 million monthly pageviews. In April, Digiday launched Pulse, a quarterly magazine that offers a more ruminative variety of Digiday’s generally pithy coverage.
Over time, the staff of Digiday Media has ballooned as it seeks to position itself as an international leader in niche coverage areas. There are now 60 people working for Digiday, which has offices in New York, Tokyo, London and Israel. The company is self-funding and profitable. And it’s planning new initiatives to drum up revenue, such as a subscription business, with at least one additional vertical in the mode of Glossy coming later this year.
How will Glossy separate itself from established publications devoted to covering fashion, like Vogue, Racked, Elle and Marie Claire? Pathak says the vertical’s strong focus on digital transformation, along with its honesty and editorial rigor, will set it apart from the competition.
“We’ve never been afraid to call a spade a shovel at Digiday; the fashion and luxury industries need that dose of reality,” she said. “We hope to provide that. Glossy will offer in-depth and high-quality coverage, a modern design and an honest approach to provide fashion and luxury brands a trusted source.”
The ultimate objective, Pathak says, is to create a “global media company” that transforms the industries it covers.
“We’re building the content and community necessary to do that, with editorial coverage that’s accurate, honest and necessary,” Pathak said. “And we’re doing that with diversified revenue streams with a focus on specific industries.”
