Ooh-La-La…Porter Named Luxury Publisher of the Year

portermagazine-fbNet-a-Porter’s print magazine has been named best in class for last year, thanks to fantastic editorial and improved technical integration.

When upscale digital retailer Net-A Porter launched their luxe print magazine Porter almost two years ago, the fashion industry went “ooooh” and the publishing world said “whaaaaa??”

We were initially skeptical of their stated goal to launch “shoppable pages,” their digital tie-in for instant shopping, and thought the initial attempts to tie in printed pages with instant shopping gratification fell a little flat.

Yet the brand persevered and has created a magazine that truly speaks to its audience, full of rich content and gorgeous imagery that helped put a punctuation mark on the industry shift toward lifestyle publications. Simply put, they are nailing it, making news in December with their 100 Incredible Women issue and now for being named Luxury Daily’s 2015 Luxury Publisher of the Year.

“Porter won over the first runner’s-up The New York Times and second runner’s-up Modern Luxury, a media company that targets consumers in niche groups,” explains Luxury Daily’s Forrest Cardamenis. “These top luxury publications aimed to appeal to the lifestyle of affluent readers by featuring advertisements from the industry’s leading brands, services and travel destinations while providing an outlet for relevant content.”

“The magazine focuses exclusively on fashion and beauty and aims for quality over quantity, with less frequent, smaller and more editorial-heavy issues when compared with competitors such as Vogue,” Cardamenis explains.

“The publication gave Net-A-Porter a physical extension of its brand, a move that both relied on frequent consumers and also reinforced their loyalty to the outlet,” Cardamenis continues. “As many luxury publications have slowly turned toward mass in response to the changing publishing industry, Porter’s introduction, the retailer’s first venture into print media, has created tension among competitors because of how far down the purchasing funnel it resides.”

And yes, they’ve fixed the buggy shopping interface with a new app that scanned more than 90,000 products last year, Cardamenis notes, making it a cohesive cog in their multi-channel strategy.

We congratulate the team at Porter for a job well done and a creative and innovative way to use print to sell fashion.