For Startups, Print is the New Print

[responsive]oakstreetmag[/responsive]”We don’t see it as advertising. We see it as a product — an extension of the brand.”

So states Ethan Song, co-founder of menswear start-up Frank & Oak, in an interview with CNN Money’s Sara Ashley O’Brien about the company’s new print magazine Oak Street.

“With thick paper stock and roughly 100 pages, the magazine consists of fashion photography and original interviews with entrepreneurs, designers, artists and chefs. There is some Frank & Oak product placement throughout, but it feels more like a coffee table mainstay than a catalog,” O’Brien writes.

O’Brien summarized nicely what we’ve been seeing for months now – entrepreneurial-style niche magazines launching as part of high-end and digital-first business models. The list is growing: AirBNB’s Pineapple, Porter magazine, The Standard Hotel, Skift magazine, all launching print magazines as part of their business model.

To us this reads like the vanguard of a new age in publishing. With the shake-up of the traditional newsstand, small and nimble publishers are seeing daylight where they once only saw obstacles.

Luxury lifestyle publication Monocle, for example, has taken control of their own destiny by opening their own newsstands, the first of which will live near London’s Paddington Station and offer a carefully curated selection of magazines plus global POD newspapers.

This is the dawn of some truly exciting developments in print, as savvy entrepreneurs understand the critical branding role a print magazine can play in their success.