Time was when most businesses were owned and managed by specialists who would spend a lifetime steeped in their industries and reading ‘trade magazines’ focused on their own craft skills. It all started to change with the growth of investment markets, business education, technology and international trade: people, funding and tech became transferable.
Even, ahead of digital disruption, the hard walls between industries had started to come down, spawning a new generation of business information services to supplant once-dominant “technical” journals.
Apart from meeting the needs of 21st century executives, the new information businesses have increasingly attracted the readership of “prosumers” who share an interest in a specific industry alongside their own work in areas like tech, media, finance and marketing. It’s the opportunity for single-sector media businesses to build profile, profit and influence well beyond their own industries.
There may be no better example of this ‘consumerisation’ of B2B media than The Business of Fashion (BoF). The London-based news, information and events brand was founded 10 years ago by Canada-born former management consultant Imran Amed. He had graduated from from McGill, in Canada, and completed an MBA at Harvard before spending entry-level years at McKinsey in the UK. His unlikely journey to journalist-publisher has been via an ill-fated incubator for young fashion designers and a blog. The experience of trying to inject “business” into the creativity of fashion startups proved to be perfect schooling for Amed, as did his learn-as-you-go journalism. After five years of increasingly insightful and well-followed blogging from his apartment in London’s Notting Hill, in 2013 he started to focus fulltime on his embryonic media business.
He was launching into a B2B fashion world still largely dominated by trade journals: Drapers (in the UK) and Women’s Wear Daily (in the US) and there was a clear dividing line between B2C magazines and B2B information. As traditional revenue dried up for magazines and new digital services began to blur the lines between B2B and B2C, Amed sought to blend the two and soon gained a global must-read following among the fashion executives, creatives and entrepreneurs who tell the rest of us what to think, wear and do.
From the start, the fresh-thinking BoF sparked a new kind of dialogue in the $2.5trillion fashion industry then emerging as a force in global business and popular culture helped by the rise of social media.
The fledgling media entrepreneur was gaining in confidence but his first pitches to investors, during the early mayhem of the internet, were not encouraging. BoF eventually raised its first £1.5mn seed funding in 2013, followed two years later by a £12.5mn series A led by Frederic Court’s London-based Felix Capital (which also had fashion-focused investments in Goop, Farfetch, Castore and Ami). The investments led to the launch of BoFCareers (2014) and – crucially – to the first paid subscriptions (2016), as well as sought-after global events (BoFVoices), and a sometime print product for luxury advertisers.
The inventive portfolio has played well in a global fashion market that – for all the general economic disruption – is now predicting annual growth averaging 9% over the next five years. Just this week, The Economist noted the sharp acceleration in the funding and sponsorship of TV and streaming shows by haute couture firms. The fashion industry is booming.
Since BoF was seen to compete with everyone from WWD to The Economist and the Wall Street Journal, it was not surprising that its series B funding round was led by the Financial Times, which bought a 7.9% stake for £4.4mn in 2019. For both partners, the synergy seemed undeniable: it bolstered the FT’s luxury and fashion business credentials, and gave BoF investor credibility and the funds to grow globally and diversify into beauty, watches and jewellery. Although nobody will say so, even now, BoF is just the kind of business media brand that the FT itself might once have launched alongside its Business of Luxury conference and the How To Spend/ Save It weekend magazine. The FT’s enthusiastic investment in 2019 might have indicated its wish, one day, to own the startup.
But it might just have missed its chance.
BoF daily and weekly newsletters and podcasts are said to circulate to 1mn people in more than 125 countries but its growing financial strength is based on the estimated 100,000 people who pay an average of £120 per year (with executive membership at up to £1.5k per head). And its reputation, as something like the Bloomberg, Economist or Wall Street Journal of global fashion, is burnished by its annual State of Fashion, sponsored by McKinsey, and the BoF 500 listing of the industry’s most influential people. The team is variously based in London, New York, Paris and Shanghai, overseeing the BoF Professional (“the world’s largest community of fashion professionals”), BoF Careers (a marketplace for fashion talent), summits, VOICES (an annual invitation-only event for big thinkers), and (as part of its widening ambition) The Business of Beauty Global Forum.
That’s only part of the progress that keeps Amed (who hosts a weekly podcast) smiling as he works his way through the six “fashion weeks” taking place this month everywhere from New York (just ended) to London (next week), Milan, Paris, Seoul and Tokyo.
He has something to celebrate.
Following the parties, catwalks, interviews and air kisses, the BoF founder will soon be filing his 2023 accounts which are expected to show the company’s first positive EBITDA profit. A big breakthrough.
After 11 years of losses totalling some £18mn – funded cautiously by short-term loans and equity issues to its 30 fashion-focused shareholders – the company bounced back from pandemic events paralysis by growing revenue 49% during 2020-22. Notably, subscriptions (accounting for 69% of all revenue in 2022) have increased by 54% since 2019. During that same four years, non-UK revenues (once the minority) have increased to become 60% of the total, consolidating the company’s global footprint.
The breakthrough came courtesy of a 30% revenue increase in 2022 which reduced the company’s deficit to just £300k after a decade of annual losses peaking at £5mn. It means that an expected revenue increase of at least 25% in 2023 will have produced its first EBITDA profit (maybe up to £2mn).
| Business of Fashion £mn SnapShot | 2023* | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 |
| Revenue | 20.0 | 16.1 | 12.4 | 10.8 | 12.2 |
| UK | 6.6 | 5.5 | 4.5 | 6.3 | |
| RoW | 9.6 | 6.9 | 6.3 | 5.9 | |
| Subs | 11.1 | 9.5 | 9.2 | 7.2 | |
| EBITDA | 2.0 | (0.3) | (1.4) | (2.2) | (5.0) |
| People | 100 | 88 | 88 | 93 | 84 |
Apart from the stand-out patience of the knowledgeable investors best able to guage BoF’s growing influence, the financials reveal a relatively cautious approach to staffing (c50% of total costs). During the five years estimated above, the 64% increase in revenue has been marked only by a 19% growth in headcount. The strong growth in paid subscriptions has, of course, helped to support the company’s liquidity and its repayment of short-term loans. But, despite the market euphoria, it has kept its costs under control.
That, of course, is only a small part of why The Business of Fashion is a great role model for a new generation of B2B-B2C specialist media, perhaps in sectors like sports, banking and tech.
With its breakthrough into profitability, Imran Amed’s “passion project” might already be worth at least £60-80mn. But he really has only just begun.
