Interviews blogs by LEON Bailey Green

Which online fashion stores does NOW magazine editor Abigail Blackburn rate?

Read my latest Drapers blog, ‘Interview with NOW magazine editor Abigail Blackburn (Part 2)’

See Part 1 of the interview here

What does the internet mean to the editor of Britain’s premier celebrity weekly?

Abigail Blackburn, editor of NOW magazine, reveals her must-read websites, views on blogging and the role of showbiz gossip forums.

So, what are your favourite websites?
Abigail: I’m a regular on Wonderwall, The Superficial and People.com (and its Celebrity Baby Blog).

My guilty secret is First Lady of Style because I actually don’t feel my week’s complete if I haven’t checked out what Michelle Obama’s been wearing - I obsess about all her belts and most of her dresses.

First Lady of Style & Deadline Hollywood Daily

I also check out Deadline Hollywood Daily for US industry gossip, Girl With A Satchel to keep up with Aussie media gossip and The Style Editor because, in all seriousness, NOW’s Alison Tay is an enigma whose blog is always full of surprises, even though I can see her desk from my office.

It’s the only way I can keep up with her. 

What did you think of Online Fashion 100?
A great idea. My mum couldn’t understand why I wasn’t at number one though!

Who in the list would you most like to be stuck in a lift with?
For stealing style tips, definitely Natalie Massenet. I suppose with net-a-porter as your own private wardrobe, it’s not difficult to be well-dressed, but she always looks so effortlessly chic.

If I’m going to be there for ages, probably Maria Milano; we’re old friends, having sat next to each other for three years when she edited GQ.com and I edited Glamour.com, so always have plenty to gossip about.

You worked with My-Wardrobe on a trends channel, would you like to work more closely with retailers on content in the future?
We’re always on the hunt for new partners and have done some great partnership work this year with Wallis, Uniqlo, Lastminute.com and i-escape.com, to name just a few.

I recently had lunch with Miriam Lahage and Nicola Grylls, CEO and Marketing Manager respectively, of Koodos.com.

Koodos has a blog called Bargainista where they publish discount codes of competitors to encourage repeat visits to the website (see my previous blog on it here).

Miriam and Nicola mentioned that some people thought they were “crazy” to promote their competitors.

It’s undeniably a risky strategy, but the best ideas have to be a bit crazy and it’s all about taking risks to establish a position in the market.

It was pleasing, but unsurprising given the current economic climate, to hear that Koodos has been doing well selling designer at discount. And even better during the other climate change; the weather.

I recently met up with Vanessa Knox-Brien and Baukjen de Swaan Arons, the founders of online success story Isabella Oliver, at their office in north London.

With a day packed full of meetings, lunches and international conference calls, back to back and all timed to precision, I waited patiently for my time with the entrepreneurial pair.

In the few minutes I was sat in the waiting area, which is part of the open plan office, I could hear the creative team discussing the wording of the next newsletter.

As you would expect my 360 glance of the office uncovered every fashion company must-have; magazine and product cut outs plastered to the walls. Isabella Oliver’s office was everything people outside of the industry imagine the fashion business to be – glamorous, exciting and everything but dull.

But as we know fashion retail is a challenging business and whilst glamour’s good, it doesn’t get you everywhere.

Gemma Cartwright, founder of Catwalk Queen, is one of Britain’s most popular fasion bloggers. I asked Gemma about Catwalk Queen’s editorial process, the influence of fashion blogs and what items, available online, she’s coveting.

Who is the Catwalk Queen reader?
She’s a young woman interested in fashion, shopping and celebrities who wants mainstream fashion news in an easily accessible way.

She shops on the high street but aspires to buy designer, and she probably loves a bit of quirky vintage too.

How do you decide day to day which stories to cover?
We have a calendar of big events; award shows, fashion weeks, big movie premieres, album releases and so on, and tailor content to fit that.

We also look at seasonal trends, so we’ll cover swimwear in the run-up to Summer, coats in Autumn etc. But a lot of it comes from what happens on a daily basis. What we see on the news wires, picture agencies and our RSS feeds each day.

I’d say about 60% of the content is unplanned, and is a reaction to what’s happening at the time.

What’s your take on email press releases sent to multiple editors using the BCC field?
Not a problem at all, so long as it’s well-targeted. I understand that no PR has the time to personalise every single email.

But you’d be amazed at the amount of useless press releases I get because people haven’t read the site before adding me to their mailing list.

Also, if they forget to blind copy, that’s another matter!

Ever wondered what it’s like to work for Topshop boss Philip Green? Well I recently interviewed a woman who knows.

Sarah Maskell is described as the billionaire’s protégé. Since working for Arcadia, she’s gone on to produce her own collection of lingerie for plus-size women.

I was recently joined by Chantelle Znideric for lunch at Sushinho restaurant in Chelsea.

Chantelle is a stylist who works with clients on a one-to-one basis to revamp their wardrobes and create looks that work for them.

When she’s finished making her clients feel good about themselves the Surrey based stylist is working behind the scenes with digital marketing professional Hayden Allen-Vercoe on a series of web projects, including those which promote her styling service.

Just type ‘personal stylist’ into Google and you will see the hundreds of personal shoppers across the country appear in the search results all vying for attention, but Chantelle’s TopStylista website www.personal-stylist.co.uk takes the #1 prime position.

My-Wardobe.com’s co-founders Andrew and Sarah Curran joined me to have lunch at Bentley’s Restaurant in Mayfair.

Me with My-Wardrobe CEO Sarah Curran

Innocently humble (probably a result of living outside the London fashion and media bubble) the couple oozed a work hard, play hard, have fun mentality. Complete without the airs, graces and complacency that sometimes follows successful entrepreneurs.

If anyone lives by the “you get out what you put in” mantra, it’s these two. They, and the team at My Wardrobe, have put in three years of hard work to build one of the biggest successes in British online retail, now recognised by the industry at the Drapers Etail Awards.

I am always interested in hearing the motivations of online entrepreneurs for starting their businesses, and the Curran’s told a story that would read well on the pages of Tatler.

A combination of love, business, family and of course fashion, it’s one of a couple who cleverly capitalised on a growing industry at the right time, in the right way and for the right reasons.

Aiming to connect brands with the top 10% of bloggers in the web’s most lucrative sectors Tailsweep is on a mission to change the online advertising landscape in the UK.

By offering advertisers more insight into the buzz their online campaigns have created, the company’s UK Sales Director Dan Britcher and Operations Manager Duncan Chamberlain are optimistic Tailsweep can emulate its Swedish success in Britain.

I recently interviewed Dan to find out just how they differentiate themselves from Glam and how they can ensure advertisers appear next to quality content.

Glam has been adopted by many fashion and lifestyle publishers in the UK, is this a market Tailsweep is after too?
Dan: Yes. Our experience from Sweden tells us that this is an area that fashion and luxury brands have to engage with.

We differ to Glam in our business model and the fact that we are not an ad network in its traditional sense.

We are experts in blogs and there is a need to educate fashion brands about how to engage with consumers in this area. If brands understand this area it will reap significant returns.

To ensure quality for your advertisers, your publishers must be creating quality content. How do you make sure this happens?

Tailsweep only represents bloggers who are publishing high quality content in the first place.

We make a qualitative and quantitative assessment of their sites – strong editorial, site architecture, content structure, in/ outbound links, RSS, Page Views and Unique Users and then we invite them to join our platform on a non-exclusive basis.

A brand safe environment is obviously important for advertisers but at the same time they have to appreciate that editorial integrity is sacrosanct and not something to be influenced.

There is still a perception that the blogosphere is somewhat like the Wild West which is far from the reality. Our blog partners are publishing platforms of equal/greater influence than many of the major media publishers and we need to work to preserve that integrity and our role is to educate brands about this space.

Tailsweep would never even try to influence content. If a brand has a compelling product, service or marketing initiative and it is newsworthy our bloggers will pick up on it anyway.

After being ill off work for six years Dean Farebrother was forced to do an IT course to keep his benefits.

Who would have guessed that doing the course would have led to the father of one setting up an online store, let alone one that would retail adult toys?

When bosses at a bank he worked for found out about his entrepreneurial activities he was fired on the spot. Determined to succeed Dean said “The sudden loss of income forced my hand and drove me to make a success of my fledgling business”.

He hasn’t looked back. Numerous awards later and SexToys.co.uk is one of the leading online adult retail stores.

I interviewed Dean to get a little bit more background on his motivations behind the business and marketing the website in such a competitive area.

We know your IT course gave you the skills to develop a site, but where did the passion come from for sex toys?

Dean: The passion came from the fact that I always wanted to run own business and be successful.

For as long as I can remember I’ve felt it was my destiny. It was never about the merchandise and ALL about the money and success.

I researched a lot of markets before choosing sex toys. I had a set criteria that I wanted to meet and sex toys seemed to tick all the boxes.

How is your order fulfilment managed?

The business was originally started from my cupboard under the stairs at home (when my daughter was still a baby). This was out-grown within three months when we moved into our first unit on a local enterprise park.

I still remember my wife and I packing the orders, licking the stamps and taking the sacks to the post office every day - one thing about starting your own business is that along the way you will end up doing every single job in the company at some point. 

We now have a large warehouse where we fulfil all of our retail and wholesale orders. Thankfully my stamp licking days are long gone.

This week I interviewed Turi Munthe of Demotix, a citizen-journalism website and photo agency.

Firstly, well done with the launch and the coverage you have achieved so far. How do you intend to keep the momentum going?

We’ve only just really started on getting the word out that we exist, and are happy that the process is slow and gentle.

In this first phase, the kind of contributors we’re bringing on is more important than the number. It means we pretty much only have interesting content.

But to answer more broadly, I - as CEO - will be spending the next year running round the globe meeting with journalists, photographers, newspapers and citizen activists to tell them that we exist and can really help them.

I’m off to Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan in the first couple of weeks of Feb, then Russia, and then Zimbabwe.

For quality purposes you check all submissions before they appear on the website. How many moderators do you have, and what measures are in place to ensure Demotix is politically neutral?

We have a rotating group of about 7 moderators, but on neutrality we’re a citizen space. We have no politics. No editorial.

If the community sways more one way on a political issue, then we’ll make a concerted effort to bring on the other demographic but can’t guarantee anything.

How did online shoe store Shudoo begin? Find out in this interview with co-founder Claire Russell.

Read my interview with Alice Stone, designer and founder of Lily And Lionel on Drapers.

Read my interview with Holly Watson, Website Manager of Rokit.co.uk on Drapers.