Having spent 15 years working on fashion and lifestyle titles in London’s cut-throat publishing world, Julie Harris is, unsurprisingly, meticulously, stylishly put together.
However, the Devil Wears Prada comparisons stop there, once the new regional head of online trend bible WGSN displays a more human touch to go with the ambition you would expect from a publishing doyenne.
Comfortable in sky-high heels, Harris’ most recent position was managing director at Elle Collections, a magazine she launched for her previous employers Hachette Filipacchi.
“In one way or another, I’ve been involved in the fashion and lifestyle space for the last 15 years, since leaving ad sales at The Times of London,” she says.
Which makes her well suited for her new role overseeing WGSN, a site that is often viewed as the dominant search tool for fashion professionals.
WGSN, or Worth Global Style Network, was launched 10 years ago by the Worth brothers in London. With its roots in design, it quickly morphed into a bible for fashion professionals.
“All in all, we probably have about 200 content contributors feeding in to the London-hub,” says Harris. Added to that is 10 years worth of archives, making WGSN a force to be reckoned with in the trend-search engine space.
Harris admits that the shift from the traditional world of print to a continually updated global site is “a challenge.”
“But at the end of the day, publishing is about knowing what the reader wants - whether that reader happens to be a business or a consumer is less important than timing and accuracy of content.”
“Fast-fashion has really transformed how we think about retail - the likes of Zara who change their collections all the time mean that there’s a lot more to keep up with than in the past, where you’d have a couple of collections every year,” she explains.
“A website like WGSN, which is updated daily, really fits with that business model”.
The saturation in the women’s magazine space, meanwhile, means that Harris is eyeing some fairly aggressive growth targets. “In a print magazine, if you have one per cent growth, you’ve had a good year; here, we’re looking at 30 per cent growth - of course that’s exciting”.
Not a stickler for the editorial-financial divide, Harris’ current role has her supervising operations in Asia, as well as making sure that her editorial team has its finger on the pulse of Asian trends.
“To be honest, that’s not all that different from my previous jobs - when I launched a magazine, I hired all the editors,” she says. “I believe in taking a holistic view of publishing, whether it’s magazines or online.”
Harris is relatively new on the job - she took up the position six months ago. Within a month, she and her family had relocated to Hong Kong. Harris has, if her emails are anything to judge by, been on the road ever since.
WGSN has grown dramatically since it was launched in Asia eight years ago and Harris says the time is ripe for a more extensive infrastructure to be put in place, to offer support for the projected tripling of Asia-Pacific subscribers that Harris and her team are hoping to rope in over the course of the next few years.
With no advertising on the site, WGSN’s revenue stems exclusively from subscription, which begs the question: isn’t its Asian subscription growth target a little ambitious?
“I think the difference is that this is a B2B site, rather than a consumer site, and businesses are definitely prepared to pay for this service,” she counters.
Though a Japanese language website was launched early this year and a Chinese language site appears to be in the works, Harris has no plans to “Asianise” WGSN.
Although she is quick to laud the vibrancy of the diverse Asia-Pacific region, she is nevertheless adamant that the local fashion landscape - with the exception of Japan - has a lot of catching up to do.
“There’s talent in the schools and some gifted people out there, but the designers need more international exposure ,” she says.
The dominance of WGSN has caused riled fashionista bloggers to accuse the site of stifling creativity, as executives with their eyes on the bottom line can play it safe by sticking to WGSN projections.
Harris is unimpressed by this argument.
“If that’s the case, then executives need to take a long hard look at their design teams to find the root of the problem,” she says. “WGSN is not prescriptive, we don’t say ‘It’s red or dead this season’”.
“It’s a tool, and how people use it is up to their own discretion - we never sell it as a replacement for a design team.”
Julie Harris’ CV
2007 General manager, WGSN
2002 General manager, Hachette Filipacchi UK
2000 Global commercial director, Emap Digital
1999 Commercial director, Emap Elan
1997 Publisher, Elle Decoration
1993 Director of advertising, Elle UK
