After hearing in April that Style.Com would be folded into Vogue.com under the url vogue.runway.com, it turns out all is not lost for the site - with Style.com set to become an online shopping destination.
While it’s no secret Condé Nast has long had plans to expand into the e-commerce sector, more news on how the publishing house is moving into this arena has recently come to light.
In an official statement, Condé Nast International has revealed Style.com’s re-appropriation as an e-tailer will be debuted in Great Britain, and followed by the US before making its way worldwide.
It states: “Users will be able to order merchandise from magazine-branded websites and digitised magazine editions in app form, as well as the Style.com website itself. Technology will also enable readers to place orders by scanning many of the images appearing in the printed magazines.”
It will originally have 100-200 brands on offer, with plans to expand in sales and geographical reach as time goes by. These brands will target fashion, as well as the sectors of beauty, travel services and technology.
For Conde Nast president of e-commerce Franck Zayan, the company’s foray into e-commerce is unheard of. “What publishing companies have tried to do for the past three to four years is to find a way of bridging the gap between content and commerce. If you open any of those magazines, for page after page, it basically talks about products,” he says.
Zayan believes the move into e-commerce is the essential next step for the Condé Nast empire. “We’re not just going to buy a big warehouse and stock it with thousands and thousands of products. We’re going to build this in a process. Bringing commerce closer to everything you see in the Condé Nast magazines makes perfect sense because that’s what customers expect. They’re really asking for it, they want it.”
But Zayan’s belief is that a link to e-commerce is something that should be integrated into all publications. “Ideally anything presented in magazines should be able to be purchased… We’re not talking about fashion only. It’s beauty, high tech, travel – a very wide range of products. It’s a very large number of categories that should be made available to the readers of the magazines. It should be seen as a service, as something that is brought to the reader as a value-added service.”
