The Lucky Group is launching its digital style content on the new LuckyShops.com, which makes all of the items shoppable, entering the brand into a new source of revenue following recent staff layoffs and a kick to the curb from Condé Nast last fall.

LuckyShops will include a curated selection of merchandise from various fashion designers, including Kenzo, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Public School, The Row and Opening Ceremony. These high-priced items will allow Lucky to monetize its content and stand on its own.

“It’s an interesting concept with a very targeted audience,” said Paula Rosenblum, managing partner at RSR Research, Miami. “I do know that curated assortments are desirable for consumers; by that I mean, a big box retailer with all kinds of clothes and accessories from all different vendors can be frustrating to consumers.

They prefer the places they shop recognize them and their tastes,” she said. “It’s too soon to tell if the layoffs are significant or not.”

Seeing green
Although digital and mobile have revolutionized the customer experience, many marketers have fallen at the feet of the transformation of the retail industry. Editorial companies have perhaps suffered the worst having been left stranded with little means to monetize.

Undoubtedly, native ads play their part for magazines and other online publications, but a more direct form of revenue could be the future for editorial.

Lucky created the new omnichannel solution for “style-conscious” consumers.

LuckyShops.com also aims to deliver opportunities for advertising and retail partners by offering a platform made for storytelling across multiple channels.

Lucky believes its customer has the goal to shop and buys 70 percent more product over the course of one year than the average women’s magazine reader.

The new site is mobile-optimized complete with search and shopping cart icons located at the top, along with a hamburger icon at the top left-hand corner for easy navigation. Viewers have access to beauty, fashion and entertainment content as well as individual and recommended products chosen by the Lucky team.

Condé Nast still holds a majority stake in The Lucky Group.

Moving to mobile
This is not Lucky’s first attempt at mobile shoppable content.

In 2011, Lucky magazine introduced a new mobile shopping app with a universal bar code scanner that acted as a companion to the print magazine.

The Lucky Shopper app let users scan a variety of types of 2D bar codes to compare prices. The app addressed the growing use of smartphones by shoppers while they were inside stores to compare prices and access other information (see story).

Other women’s magazines have taken similar steps toward mobile commerce, but as of late, Lucky is the first to break the silence in more than a year.

In December 2013, Hearst Corp.’s House Beautiful magazine took its investments in digital watermarking with an initiative that let consumers shop from ads.

The home décor magazine was the first publication to leverage a technology from Digimarc and ShopAdvisor that let consumers shop from House Beautiful static print ads. House Beautiful was also one of the first publishers to originally roll out digital watermarking in its print edition (see story).

“I personally think pure-play ecommerce retail is a very tough business, but if the magazine has a strong enough mailing list it should help,” Ms. Rosenblum said.

Final Take
Caitlyn Bohannon is an editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York