Fashion Week Bulletin: 'The Daily' Goes Weekly

This year's New York Fashion Week, which started today, may lack some of the shimmer of years past, but the company that produces it, IMG, is home to of the publishing industry's few growth stories.

Each spring and fall for the past six years, IMG has published eight issues of The Daily, a news and gossip magazine distributed free to fashion insiders and handed out free at Bryant Park, where the shows take place. It also has a companion website, fashionweekdaily.com, that's updated year-round, and a quarterly sister title, The Daily Mini.

Starting in September, there will be a new addition to the family: The Daily Weekly. "People really love what we do online, and they always say to us, 'Why don't you do The Daily in print more often?'" says editor in chief Brandusa Niro. So, beginning in November, IMG examined the feasibility of launching another title and concluded -- somewhat surprisingly, given the dismal state of the ad market -- that the necessary support existed. (This year's batch of February issues carries a collective 189 ad pages, up from 171 last year.)

The Daily Weekly will come out 40 times a year on Friday mornings, with the first issue timed to coincide with the start of Milan's Fashion Week. It will have a distribution of between 25,000 and 35,000 comprising a mix of subscriptions and controlled circulation.

"The people we write about aren't normally chronicled in Us Weekly or In Touch," says Niro. "It requires a reader with a certain passion for the subject to come to us, and we really only want this reader."

-----
Disclosure: The Daily is a competitor to WWD, a sister title of Portfolio, and also my former place of employ.