By - Press Release
Category - Custom Website Development
Posted By - Imagination Print
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| Custom Website Development |
The Business of Fashion,
an online journal started five years ago by Canadian Imran Amed, won
the backing from prestigious companies including Louis Vuitton Moet
Hennessy.
Also set to take a stake in the website is Index
Ventures, which already has a stake in Net-a-Porter and Asos, Samos
Investments, which has invested in Ocado and Betfair, and Carmen
Busquets, a founding investor in Net-a-Porter.
Tech and
media investment firm Novel TMT Ventures and Advancit Capital, an
early-stage media and tech fund launched by CBS/Viacom's vice-chairman
Shari Redstone, have also taken a stake.
The site, which
attracts 150,000 users a month, was started by Amed six years ago from
his flat in London. A Harvard MBA graduate, he had worked for McKinsey
& Company but says he found his creative ambitions unfulfilled and
quit to explore a new career in the media.
"I felt I was
only using one side of my brain, so I took a risk and left. I tried
music and TV but there was always a clear separation between creative
and commercial and in fashion it was just a bit fuzzier," he said.
He
began posting musings about fashion on a blog and as he became more
prolific found he was building a dedicated following and highly engaged
community who wanted to track his analysis of fashion trends, economics,
and consumer behaviour.
Unlike fashion blogs such as The Sartorialist, which concentrate on style trends, Amed focuses on the business.
His Twitter account
has nearly 600,000 followers and a photo of Chanel chief Karl Lagerfeld
he posted on Instagram had 1,200 likes. Across all social media the
site has 800,000 users.
His success in raising $2.1m
(£1.35m) in seed capital will be of interest to bloggers around the
world who find it difficult to convert traffic highs into cash.
"I was just writing on a blog and I didn't really imagine that six years later that I would be raising money," said Amed.
"What
happened is we have started building this community and this community
gathers around this website. Now that we have regular engagement from
users, that is what the investors have bought into," he added.
The
site is still being run on a lean budget but he hopes to have hired up
to 10 staff, mainly tech and commercial, within the year and get to work
on building events and other brand extensions to generate revenue.
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