Gallery Media Group, the digital media company behind PureWow and a handful of social brands, is taking aim at luxury — and has made an acquisition to do so.
The company has acquired The Coveteur, which had wound down last year after introducing a rebrand and naming Jenna Lyons editor in chief at large. Nevertheless, Ryan Harwood, founder and chief executive officer of Gallery Media, sees myriad opportunities across the brand’s channels.
“It’s the first real acquisition we’ve done in the publishing space,” Harwood said. “I’m interested in adding brands that have real brand equity amongst an audience, and with Coveteur, there’s a subset of humans that it evokes a certain feeling for. It’s not about scale for scale’s sake.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Harwood said the group had grown its top line consistently since its 2010 founding.
He’s also put a team in place, starting from the top: Faith Xue has been tapped for the editor in chief role; she most recently served as Bustle Digital Group‘s executive beauty director, and reports into Gallery’s chief brand officer Mary Kate McGrath. Xue has also filled out the team for digital and fashion editor positions.
“It’s a media brand that people really love, and the key emphasis is on the word ‘brand,’” she said. “You have to create so much more than just content that people read on the site.”
Xue will continue with key verticals across “fashion, beauty, lifestyle, travel and food,” she said, but keep the tone of Coveteur’s first iteration — and even bring back its old logo. “Back in the day, Coveteur was giving people access to this very personal side of celebrities and tastemakers by showing their closets,” she continued. “My vision for the brand is to home in on that intimate feel so everything we cover, whether it’s fashion week or Frieze, will be through that lens.”
Some of that will be commerce-driven, some of that on social platforms and some on the website. “We don’t think about a single channel as more important than the other. When we think about consumer attention and advertising deals, we want to reach consumers wherever they find us,” Harwood said. That being said, “I do think social and experiential are the most opportunistic areas for growth for the brand. Not more important, but where there’s the most room.”