15 years ago, Style.com was launched as the online site for Vogue magazine, later becoming a destination for fashion industry news, trends, and runway show galleries. According to Business of Fashion, Condé Nast (the media company that owns Vogue, GQ, and Vanity Fair) has decided to convert the popular site into an e-commerce destination this Fall in the UK, with between 100 and 200 brands at launch. This comes shortly after the site relaunched with a much better design late last year.
Franck Zayan, president of Style.com, told BoF that the venture will not carry stock in its early stages, but will instead make a commission on the items that it sells, which will focus on luxury fashion items but will also include tech, beauty, and other products that align with Condé Nast publications. "Style is an extremely powerful brand," said Zayan. "In many ways it is Condé Nast’s middle name. In one five-letter word it describes precisely what we are building: a lifestyle destination for commerce."
The editorial component of Style.com will be relocated to VogueRunway.com, which currently redirects you to Vogue.com's "Fashion Week" page. Obviously the current url is much easier to remember and is probably the best domain in the industry, which makes Condé Nast's plan a smart one.
The company's president Bob Sauerberg told Business of Fashion that fashion e-commerce is a "$1.5 trillion marketplace that’s growing high double digits a year. We studied it hard in the US and it was very clear to us that scale was critical. Talking through opportunities with Jonathan [Newhouse], we were thrilled to find a way to do this together. So we structured this in a way that we believe gives us the best chance to succeed."
Following the launch in the UK, the new Style.com will launch in the US in 2016 and in other markets (Asia, Europe, etc.) in the following years.
