Online fashion and lifestyle cross-platform brand SheerLuxe’s journey — from online directory of online retailers to Media Brand of the Year (B2C) at the PPA Awards in June — is pretty unique. And it’s all about community — building it, nurturing it, monetising it.
“I was always asked where I had bought things from — I have a bit of an eye, and I toyed for a while with being a stylist, then writing a book about where to shop,” SheerLuxe Founder and Chief Executive Officer Georgie Coleridge Cole recalls.
“But it soon became obvious that back then a lot of brands were starting to sell online.”
Also evident — to Coleridge Cole, at least — was that there was a gap in the market for a directory of what fashions you could buy where online. So, after a brief stint working in marketing, including for COTY Beauty, in 2007 she set out to fill it.
Initially featuring only items to buy online, the SheerLuxe website quickly added content to enhance its directory listings to make sure visitors came back.
“Back then, everything we did was different. There was still talk of digital being just a bit of a passing phase. And print titles struggled to understand us — often calling us a blog, which we were not,” she recalls.
Email marketing
One important early decision was to build a daily email into the proposition from the start — as SEO was nascent, building an email database seemed the best way to drive website traffic.
“I needed daily real estate for content to monetise it,” Coleridge Cole explains.
“It wasn’t about selling people something or leading with super luxury. It was about content that was warm, entertaining and realistic for the modern working woman.” And this built loyalty.
Another important decision was to charge brands featured in the directory for premium listings — a revenue-making tactic which then grew and evolved in sophistication with different tiers introduced over time.
The initial idea of featuring only items available to buy online then broadened to include the best of offline products, too — to the point when SheerLuxe started driving footfall in-store, too.
With initial funding of £60,000 raised in 2007 then a further £150,000 in 2008, the financial crash and its fallout then prompted a re-think, however.
“I’m naturally a cautious person and was wary of trying to raise further investment at that time. A better route seemed to be to support ourselves and get to profit quickly. So that’s what we did,” she adds, “and we did so carefully.”
In 2010, a decision was taken to retire the directory. The website then became content focused, with editorial broadening into wider lifestyle content over the years that followed.
“We created and published content and operated a pretty simple content advertiser-funded publishing revenue model while steering clear of the affiliate model that only favours the last click which dominated then,” Coleridge Cole adds. “And that’s what we still do.”
Omnichannel
Over time, SheerLuxe has built close relationships with advertisers and developed a portfolio of commercial partnership activities from ads and advertorials to events and driven by channel and platform development.
“The most successful partnerships come from reinforcing messaging across many different platforms — online, a podcast, email, something on social media. And every partnership is different,” she explains.
“As the channels via which we communicate with our readers, followers, listeners, viewers, evolve, so does the make-up of potential advertising campaigns.”
Today, as well as its daily digital newsletter covering everything from fashion and beauty to culture, home and travel, SheerLuxe publishes supplements dedicated to weddings, parenting, mature women, younger women, the modern man and it recently launched a business edition — all to drive web traffic.
And as new channels have opened up — SheerLuxe now also distributes content through social media, digital events, podcasts, and video with its own live magazine-style show on YouTube — it has capitalised on new opportunities for its audience to get to know it more.
Cumulatively, SheerLuxe now refers to its portfolio of platforms as ‘the SL Network’.
Engagement is high — it claims exceptionally good open rates — thanks to a commitment not to build content for search engines and SEO.
“We are very focused on acquisition through our email database and this, combined with our people-led, conversation-led content that is really reader-first, has been key in building a community that’s really relevant,” Coleridge Cole says.
“We don’t feature celebrities or write about royals — all tactics that can drive traffic — as so many others do,” she insists. “Instead, we focus on inspiring, educating and entertaining readers. And our tone is nice and warm, never edgy or intimidating.”
The evolution of SheerLuxe’s omnichannel strategy is shaped by the mission Coleridge Cole set herself at launch: to educate, inspire and entertain. So, today, it leans into each platform’s strengths — TikTok to entertain, Instagram to inspire, and the website to inform.
“TikTok has been huge for us,” she explains. SheerLuxe team members use it to share their own content — which, while SheerLuxe-related, is also personal.
“The rawer the better, authenticity is key. Over-edited content just doesn’t perform on TikTok, you’ve got to understand the purpose of the platform — as you do for every platform — and then be true to that.”
Back in 2017, SheerLuxe invested in a videographer filming Coleridge Cole and the team behind the scenes for ten weeks three times a year which turned into a BTS video documentary-style series that ran for five years.
This allowed SheerLuxe followers to get to know the team at a time when there wasn’t much social. And, Coleridge Cole says, it has proven to be very positive for the business. TikTok is just an extension of this. And SheerLuxe team members have large social followings now.
International expansion
In 2023, SheerLuxe launched its first regional edition — in the Middle East. The edition has a fashion and content editor and dedicated social media assistant in the UAE and a London-based senior fashion editor who previously worked as editor-in-chief at Grazia ME.
“I’ve never been desperate to go international,” Coleridge Cole readily admits. “But as a region, it has an audience that’s very engaged in the kinds of things we do and highly relevant to the kinds of companies that advertise with us.
“So, I caught a plane and went out to see.”
What she found when she got there was digital publishing “quite nascent versus the brands that were there”, tech highly sophisticated, and a clear gap in the digital publishing market.
The launch, she says, was well-received and, so far, SheerLuxe Middle East has had “a brilliant start”.
“It’s been — and continues to be — a very organic journey,” Coleridge Cole continues. “As I say to our web developers, it’s not one thing that changes a business but lots of small things that over time make the real difference.”
Looking ahead, Coleridge Cole says SheerLuxe will continue to evolve organically — whether that’s in terms of design, functionality or new formats — just as it always has.
Introducing Reem
“We are commitment to exploring new opportunities as we always have,” she insists. In the beginning, this was digital publishing. More recently, it’s been TikTok.
And this year?
Artificial Intelligence.
Though its recent decision to introduce an AI fashion editor called Reem (complete with glamourous headshot) caused a bit of a stir, prompting some concern this would reinforce unachievable beauty standards or deprive human journalists of work.
“I think we hit a nerve. But that came from our desire to be at the forefront, to continue to push barriers and to try new things — as we have always done,” Coleridge Cole observes.
“TikTok was new but our efforts with it have had a very positive impact on the business, and that came from getting out there and giving it a try. With AI, it’s here already.
“Reem hit a nerve because of concerns people have about job security and AI replacing humans but, in fact, developing Reem had quite the opposite effect — it created jobs. It’s like ecommerce — that created jobs, too. You can look at these things one of two ways.”
Moving forward, Coleridge Cole says she is determined to experiment with AI further.
“We are high profile, so any experiment can be gruelling. But you have to keep pushing,” she insists. “I tell my team, everyone can and should be using AI somehow and many are already — we’ve all got to get on board and not shy away from it. It’s not going away.”
That said, everything must be done through the lens of SheerLuxe’s educate, inspire, entertain mission. “Quality of content is fundamental in this in light of the mission we set ourselves,” Coleridge Cole says.
“Take care of that and the rest looks after itself.”
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
