LONDON — Condé Nast has granted its Hong Kong-based licensing partner, Rubicon Publishing Ltd., the publisher of Vogue Hong Kong, to launch a local edition for the men’s fashion title GQ, first digitally in the summer and then in print for September.
It marks Condé Nast’s latest effort to reclaim some of the sizable Chinese men’s media budget left unbagged following the exit of GQ China last July when it broke off with its local publishing partner Zhizu Magazine, a subsidiary of China News Service, a state-owned news agency based in Beijing.
In the Chinese market, fashion glossies exist as syndications that copublish with a state-owned entity, which grants the publication its ISSN number, its Chinese title and has the final say on all editorial content.
GQ China was launched as a partnership between Condé Nast China and Zhizu of China News Service in September 2009. In recent years, GQ China has had an uneasy relationship with China News Service, according to former employees at GQ.
While there has been speculation of a revival of GQ China in the past year — with some claiming that Jonathan Newhouse personally intervened to improve the relationship between Condé Nast and the Chinese authorities, hoping for a new permit — not much solid progress has been made so far.
GQ China’s June issue.
Courtesy
The launch of GQ Hong Kong, however, would be a viable route to not only raise Hong Kong’s voice in the global men’s media landscape but also attract big, China spending from top-tier luxury brands.
Fashion content is predominantly consumed via social media platforms like Xiaohongshu, WeChat and Weibo, instead of print in the Greater China region these days, meaning it doesn’t matter as much as before whether a cover is from GQ China or GQ Hong Kong.
Rubicon Publishing said GQ Hong Kong will be published across social media platforms and a print presence in traditional Chinese with a bilingual website. It added that the management team’s international exposure and expertise will grant GQ Hong Kong a global-local narrative for the region’s audience.
Desiree Au, publisher of Vogue Hong Kong, will also take the role of GQ Hong Kong’s publisher. Jumius Wong, a fashion veteran from Singapore, will serve as GQ Hong Kong’s editorial director.
But what got the local industry excited over the launch was the appointment of Alex Sun as executive director of GQ Hong Kong.
Sun is the chief executive officer of MC Style Media Co. Ltd., which publishes the Chinese editions of W and Marie Claire. He will continue to oversee both titles while consulting for GQ Hong Kong, according to people familiar with the matter.
Under his singular vision, both W China and Marie Claire China became highly regarded among readers and advertisers in the Chinese market. Many would agree that MC Style Media is one of Condé Nast’s biggest rivals in the Chinese market.
With Sun overlooking the launch of GQ Hong Kong, some speculate that MC Style Media might have reached some sort of agreement with Rubicon Publishing to expand the title’s appeal beyond Hong Kong and dip into the much more lucrative mainland China market.
Over the years, GQ has developed an entirely different ecosystem and business model in China from the rest of the world with the launch of the WeChat-based GQ Lab, which was helmed by Vogue China’s current editorial director, Rocco Liu.
GQ Lab, which is now not owned by Condé Nast but China News Service and was rebranded as Zhizu Lab, was a fashion digital media powerhouse with millions of followers.
At its peak, GQ Lab could command around 500,000 renminbi, or $70,500, for a single social media post. Condé Nast China back then also disclosed that GQ China became the most profitable edition due to the success of GQ Lab, yielding 200 million renminbi in revenue in 2018, an amount equivalent to several European editions combined.
Apart from WeChat, GQ Lab had more than 4.8 million followers on Weibo, Douyin and Xiaohongshu.
With Sun’s involvement, it’s logical to assume that GQ Hong Kong would want to build its very own GQ Lab-style product fit for today across Chinese social media.
Sun himself launched a popular travel lifestyle WeChat account during the first wave of the social media boom circa 2013. He now runs a successful personal account on Xiaohogshu, and both Marie Claire China and W China are highly digitally savvy as well.
The highly regarded editor began his career in fashion media at Esquire China in 2009. He worked at GQ China as lifestyle director between 2011 and 2016 and later served as editorial director of Condé Nast Traveler until he joined MC Style Media in 2018, which was backed by Chinese apparel giant Heilan Group and independent investors.
Sun has told WWD in a previous interview that the success of legacy media in mainland China “comes down to doing the hard work and pushing for exclusive content, content that our peers are unwilling to put the effort and money into doing, or simply have no resources to produce.”
— With contributions from Denni Hu
