Highsnobiety’s new venture entails retail curation. The streetwear publication announced Thursday plans to launch an e-commerce platform that combines storytelling with in-demand market trends like exclusive collections, weekly product drops and luxury streetwear collaborations.
The site—set to launch in June—will serve up weekly product drops from both brands that are on Highsnobiety’s radar and its own private-label line. Each drop will be released one at a time and will be packaged with stories about the products and the people behind them.
“With 15 years’ experience of covering product drops, we believe focusing on individual releases instead of following typical retail strategies allows us to highlight the best products, ideas, stories, and talent—regardless of season and trends,” Highsnobiety CEO and publisher, David Fischer, wrote in an article.
The e-commerce site will launch with an exclusive deal to carry Prada Linea Rossa, the luxury label’s sportswear line from the ’90s. Highsnobiety has closely tracked the line’s 2018 relaunch in articles that describe it as “the brand that helped create modern streetwear.”
In a Business of Fashion podcast, Fischer revealed that Highsnobiety’s young male audience will help “close that loop” for Prada by “not only talking about their product but also giving access to that product.”
Helping brands through affiliated marketing and branded content has been part of the blog-turned-media group’s evolution. Last year, the company secured $8.5 million from Felix Capital to invest in new technology, data capturing and niche verticals. And the new e-commerce platform appears to fall in line with Highsnobiety’s growth strategy.
In an interview with Digiday at the time of the investment, Fischer said he believed commerce revenue would make up 30 percent of Highsnobiety’s total revenue over the next five years, adding that he planned to grow the company’s e-commerce team to up to 20 people by the end of 2019. While he didn’t envision Highsnobiety becoming “a commerce platform offering thousands of products,” Fischer alluded to how the publication would become more deeply involved in the products filling its pages.
“We want to make our content better with commerce, not just speaking about things but actually doing them, too, so that we’re fully integrating products into the content,” he told Digiday.
