Condé Nast International will be an important step in the transformation of Vogue Business content

According to the exclusive interface fashion, Conde Nast International, a publisher of famous international journals such as Vogue and GQ, will launch a new media brand “Vogue Business” this week, independent of Vogue. There is no charge.

The media will post information to registered users via email in the form of a newsletter twice a week, and users can also view it on the official website. At the same time, the official account of LinkedIn and Instagram will be opened.

The post of Vogue Business will be headed by Lauren Indvik, who was the editor-in-chief of the fashion website Fashionista.com and has led the news and feature reporting team at Vogue International in London for the past two years.

In a statement, Indvik introduced Vogue Business's content features: "We handle news in a new global, visual and data-driven way, with the aim of creating maximum impact and readability that makes it easy for people to see at a glance. Understand key concepts and help industry players make decisions about business and personal career development."

Based on this content orientation, Vogue Business's target audience will be practitioners of all sizes, fashion professionals in the fashion and luxury industries, as well as luxury-related industries such as high-end hotels and luxury travel.

“This is a B to B publication for industry professionals whose needs are not met,” said Wolfgang Blau, president of Condé Nast International Group, in an interview with Interface Fashion. “We will build some services through Vogue Business in the future. ""

For example, when a company wants to understand the changes in media activity regulation, it can find people who can communicate directly through Vogue International's global lawyers. Or by holding forums to help creative directors and CEOs find the right talent. “We learned from many CEOs and creative directors that their biggest challenge is almost always 'how to find the right person,'” Blau said.

As a result, Vogue Business is viewed by Condé Nast International as a network that can exchange information rather than a top-down information dissemination system.

Now Vogue Business's editorial team is stationed at Vogue International's London headquarters, including only 6 editors including Indvik, and is still in the process of being formed. Blau plans to recruit 24 people in 2019. Content production in the short term will occasionally rely on Vogue International's data, social media and other departments, as well as the power and resources of local departments. But only if resources are available, Vogue Business will operate independently.

Blau revealed to the interface fashion that Vogue Business needs to understand the talents of China's e-commerce and retail trends, the anthropological background, the talents who can explore the impact of cultural changes on the luxury industry, and data analysts.

As a result, Vogue Business, a new attempt by Condé Nast International Group to develop publications, will begin to target some of the fashion commercial media or comprehensive media. Previously, the main content of most fashion commercial media was based on daily news broadcast plus industrial business analysis.

For example, the industry's more authoritative US media, Women's Wear Daily (WWD) and London Media Business of Fashion (BoF).

Founded in 1910, WWD is renowned for its reliable, timely fashion industry news, in-depth business and cultural coverage, and in the fashion media industry dominated by wear, stars and soft text. Later in 2014, WWD also parted ways with Condé Nast as its publisher Fairchild Fashion Media was sold to the Los Angeles media group Penske Media. The following year, the publication of newspapers was stopped, and it was completely converted into digital media with paid content.

WWD tried to cooperate with Huayang Xinke in May 2017 to enter China by opening the WeChat public account “WWD Fashion and Beauty Report”. At the time, WWD said in an interview with the interface fashion that the account was created to expand the Chinese business in the future and strengthen the connection with Chinese readers. But in April 2018, the micro-signal stopped.

This does not mean that WWD has disappeared in China. In May 2018, WWD and Xi'an SKP jointly held the second global fashion forum in the Asia-Pacific region. At the same time, its status in the international are still stable, but the development in China seems to have encountered bottlenecks.

In contrast, since its inception in 2007, BoF has established its emphasis on the direction of expansion for the Chinese market and has quickly gained a reputation in the Chinese fashion industry. Founder Imran Amed once said: "We want a publication that not only includes international fashion information, but also focuses on Chinese fashion." Now, BoF has not only opened the Chinese version of the portal on the website, but also settled on the WeChat public platform and Weibo.

In addition to WWD and BoF, fashion business media have emerged around the world in recent years. Digital media such as Fashionista, Fashion Network, and Fashion United. In China, in recent years, some comprehensive media have opened up fashion sections, or the fashion business category has become increasingly active. These media have a stronger breakthrough in local fashion news, and the style is more in line with the needs of the Chinese market.

On the whole, however, the increase in the number is further confirming the growing demand for “to B” industry-based reports in the fashion industry.

From the beginning of the fashion industry, outsiders have been attracted by the industry's clothing, consumption, models and celebrities, and most of the paper fashion media has become a brochure for brands and stars. For editors, brands, supply chains and other insiders, their vision is limited to one side of brand marketing, mechanized.

In fact, the fashion world is far from simple.

LVMH Group has adjusted its men's brand creative director several times in three months, CELINE appointed Hedi Slimane as creative director, Raf Simons is strong but still retired by Calvin Klein, and the cold brand has begun to embrace e-commerce and “getting out of fashion” The Shanghai Fashion Week attracted the attention of Milan Fashion Week, the luxury product new product release model was “show and buy”, and the luxury goods group began to acquire suppliers and watch dealers...

Behind these fashion news is inseparable from consumer, marketing, marketing, and global political, economic, and cultural changes.

Observing fashion from a broader perspective such as business is also conducive to exploring the guiding role of the fashion industry in other industries.

“For outsiders, the fashion industry has played a guiding role,” Blau said. “Intelligent technology companies will always be around creatives and artists, in order to make them more interesting and more suitable for wear.”

It is also important for industry insiders to understand the dynamic and ultra-fast development of the fashion industry through business news media. “An interesting contradiction is that people from different countries may be using WeChat chat, global business management methods may be similar, but cultural aspects are the opposite,” he said. “The markets are increasingly localized. This is very difficult for luxury goods that want to open up markets around the world."

From a reader's perspective, most well-educated millennials have become the most important consumer groups in the fashion industry. Their demand for information no longer stays at the visual level of aesthetics, but is more willing to pursue deeper content.

Therefore, traditional publishers like Condé Nast are now in need of a new content system.

According to WWD news, Condé Nast recorded the first loss in 22 years in 2017, about 13.6 million pounds. This is inseparable from the restructuring work since 2017. Condé Nast shut down a number of magazines, cut off the paper versions of some brands, and launched some video and digital projects. This is the choice that the paper media had to make under the pressure of social media.

Perhaps compared to other fashion commercial media, Condé Nast International Group's entry is a bit late, but Blau does not think so.

He said to the interface fashion that in fact, when he joined Condé Nast in 2015, he had the idea of ​​launching a similar project, but he still had other projects at hand and waited until now. However, it is still a good time.

On the one hand, he feels that in the past three or four years, the political, cultural and economic fields are accelerating, so the demand for direction and guidance from business people has increased. However, in terms of the number and size of companies in the fashion industry, the existing fashion commercial media is not enough to cover these companies.

For example, there are a lot of reports about CEOs, creative directors, and personal roles in the industry. “Of course, it is not impossible to do this. It is only when mining a business leader or designer that it needs background, analysis, and pattern recognition. Why is this person appointed? ?what does this mean?"

And this will be used as a breakthrough point by Vogue Business. "Chasing big breaking news can be done to other media. If we want to do big news, it must be the news we created ourselves, only we have."

On the other hand, Condé Nast International Group has further improved its infrastructure, talent and information sharing network during this period. The technology platform and industry resources are also fully prepared.

“When we realized that Vogue has about 800 journalists, digital editors and researchers in 25 countries around the world, and the resources of industry experts accumulated by the media for many years, we know that no one in the world has such an advantage.” Blau Say.

Currently, Vogue Business only offers English content and is scheduled to be available in 3 languages ​​in 2019. Perhaps the next is the Chinese version and the French version, but the language and online time have not been agreed. If the Chinese version is confirmed, the Chinese version of the content production and dissemination will be completed by the Condé Nast China team. Whether it will be on the WeChat public platform and Weibo will not be known.