British magazine The Face is back and available in the US
The Face, the avant-garde music, style and pop culture magazine from London that last published in Britain in 2004, is back in print and available in the US as of this week.
It is being relaunched with an entirely new business model that its new parent company, London-based Wasted Talent, thinks will click with millennials on both sides of the Atlantic.
The company first relaunched The Face as an Instagram account in March and launched the website in May. “It’s not really a magazine,” said Wasted Talent CEO Jerry Perkins, who bought the rights to the shuttered publication from Bauer Media. “It’s a platform that happens to have a print magazine as the center.”
He said he expects to spend about 5 million British pounds ($6.2 million) over the next two years before turning a profit in year three.
But unlike with past incarnations, he expects that only about 15% to 20% of its total revenue will be derived from print. Digital ads and a creative agency’s native-advertising videos will be the biggest drivers of revenue.
It helps that The Face also has a licensing deal with Gucci, which is using its logo on T-shirts and hoodies.
The original indie magazine was founded by British journalist Nick Logan in 1980 and had early covers featuring David Bowie and a 15-year-old Kate Moss, while featuring the early work of cutting-edge photographers Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Weber and Cindy Sherman.
Stuart Brumfitt, the editor of the relaunched magazine, hopes to recapture that heat. There are four different covers for his debut issue, which features hip-hop artist Tyler, the Creator, Spanish recording artist Rosalía, London-born musician Dua Lipa and British singer Harry Styles.
As part of Fashion Week, The Face has taken over an apartment at 9 Bleecker St., which will feature everything from political debates in a boxing ring in the ground-floor gym to performance art pieces on the future of sex.
“We wanted to do something that connects with our readers,” said Managing Director Dan Flowers. “While many people in London still remember the original Face, we don’t expect people here will automatically know us.” He said there will be 100,000 copies of the quarterly magazine distributed through Barnes & Noble and via the company website — and he predicts sales will be evenly divided between the US and UK.