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Fashion and luxury magazines for the past decade or so, have hoped to turn readers into consumers by selling the products they feature. The strategy has largely failed, but Robb Report thinks it has this feat figured out. The luxury magazine is turning its annual holiday catalogue into a year-round retail effort today by launching what’s called The Vault — a website where fulfilment will be handled by a team of concierges. It is not for the faint of wallet.
As of today, one may turn to The Vault to purchase a 27-litre bottle of 2019 Liber Pater Bordeaux, accompanied by a dinner hosted by Prince Albert II of Monaco, for $1.5 million. Also on offer are two rare Duel des Thés chess sets from the legendary Christofle silver maker, for $250,000. There’s a $36,000 bespoke guitar built by London’s Daisy Tempest, and a $10,000 class in cocktail making from the owner and founder of the Dante bar in New York.
The strategy could be a bit of a head scratcher, given the difficulties magazines have faced selling products directly. Readers may like what they see on glossy pages, but would rather not read and shop at the same time. Despite its many fashion-hungry subscribers, Condé Nast, the publisher of Vogue Business, failed to turn its Style.com web platform into a retail site, and wound up selling the site to Farfetch in 2017. Early-noughties strategies that would have readers clicking to buy items featured on magazine pages largely disappeared. Some blogs and online retailers continue to blur the line between publishing and retailing; Ssense and High Snobiety come to mind. An affiliate sales model has proved to move mattresses and toasters at The New York Times’s Wirecutter.
The executives of Robb Report say The Vault will be a far cry from an affiliate-sales model, given the price and one-of-a-kind nature of the goods. They believe that, unlike most magazines, they have a unique readership that will support this endeavour. “We think this can become a meaningful and impactful profit centre,” says Luke Bahrenburg, president of Robb Report, which is owned by Penske Media Corp.
What sets the effort apart, says editor-in-chief Paul Croughton, is the sheer wealth and spendy interests of the magazine’s readers. “The secret sauce of Robb Report is its audience,” he says.
That audience will find that The Vault is no typical click-to-buy site. Potential buyers may be vetted, asked to provide credit information and a written note about why they want to buy that $3.2 million Pininfarina Battista Hypercar. A team of concierges will personally arrange delivery details or itineraries.
The magazine expects to earn a 25 to 30 per cent commission on average, which is at least triple the normal percentage generated by shopping mall sales via associates, or when considering store targets. But the offerings will be few in number — roughly 35 available at any time, with 10 new items added and 10 removed each month. No item will remain available for more than 100 days.
The Vault concept grew from Robb Report’s annual holiday season ‘Ultimate Gift Guide’, which sounds a lot like the Neiman Marcus holiday catalogue. Unlike the department store however, Robb Report routinely sells those seven-figure fantasy items. Last year, someone paid $2.5 million to buy a Radford Motors Type 62-2 race car along with driving lessons from British Formula One driver Jenson Button. Someone else paid close to $10,000 for a pizza-making lesson.
Forty-eight years of publishing have left Robb Report with a relatively small but enviable readership that packs a punch, with an average subscriber whose net worth is $3.5 million, according to Google analytics. Its 100,000 print subscribers pay $199 annually for 10 issues. These people come with their wallets cocked as they peruse ads for luxury goods that are beyond aspirational. The magazine employs an aviation and a maritime editor, a “dream machines and automotive” editor, and a watch and jewellery editor.
Croughton says 86 per cent of Robb Report readers take an action based on what they’re reading in its pages. That’s certainly in large part because the magazine gets their lifestyles dead on. The magazine’s May issue has ads for molecular titanium cookware, hexagonal cigars and highly trained German shepherd guard dogs, imported from Germany. “If it’s not a Harrison K-9, it’s just a dog,” says the ad’s tagline.
Come for those ads, stay for the story on VIP sports stadium experiences. While many magazines sell fantasy, every issue of Robb Report is about filling out a life of fourth homes, eight car garages and a hunger for experiences that require a well-connected concierge. When I asked if some Robb Report readers have $2 million-plus limits on their credit cards, in order to buy some of the Vault items, Bahrenburg replied with assurance, “I think they do.”
“This is not a particularly price-sensitive crowd that we’re catering to. It’s really about satisfying their appetite for rarity,” he notes. “I think this is more organic to the way luxury magazines should be approaching readers.”
Robb Report was for many years considered a men’s publication, focused on luxury cars, spirits and other male-oriented pastimes. While 75 per cent of Robb Report subscribers are currently male, and aged 45 years, the magazine has been pressing to grow its readership among women and younger people with its digital presence. Its digital readership is 65 per cent male and averaging 42 years old. The getaways, meals and objects sold on The Vault are not designed to appeal more to men or women, Croughton says.
“Certainly in the past five years, we don’t consider ourselves a men’s title,” Croughton says. “The content is aimed at people, not men.”
Croughton, Bahrenburg and their colleagues worked for the past nine months to assemble the launch items of The Vault. They continue to approach luxury brands with “half-baked ideas” for one-off items and experiences, says Croughton.
Luxury brand executives should be prepared. Robb Report executives expect the industry to participate eagerly, given the potential to reach an ultra-wealthy clientele without churning out exclusive colourways or other costly volume production items. “We’re really not chewing into their margin,” says Bahrenburg. “This is a platform for them to come up with their best and brightest.”
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