NYLON AND FASHIONINDIE, NOW MERGED: Business was as usual for Nylon magazine staffers on Friday—none of them aware that their company was in the midst of being sold and merging with the site FashionIndie.com.
Even its interim editor-in-chief, Marvin Scott Jarrett—once the face of all things downtown cool—was unaware that the magazine he founded in 1999 was likely to soon sever ties with him. Late Friday, Nylon Holdings Inc. was sold for an undisclosed amount to a still-to-be-named new venture, headed by Joseph Mohen, the company’s chief executive officer, and Dana Fields, its executive Vice President, chief revenue officer and publisher.
Mohen—an online entrepreneur who launched election.com and SpiralFrog, among others—received a joint investment from Diversis Capital LLC and Backbone Capital Advisors LLC to acquire the two publications and its entities.
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“This was a challenging transaction, but with a very experienced and professional leadership team and a quality investor in Diversis Capital, we all were able to see the strength of the future business that Nylon has and that this was a smart investment for us to make,” said Britt Terrell, managing director of Backbone.
The new management will merge Nylon and its entities including the bi-monthly Nylon Guys Magazine, Nylon TV, Nylon’s international editions (Japan, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia), and its branded digital and social media properties.
The two publications will run separately, with FashionIndie’s founders, Beca Alexander and Daniel Saynt, maintaining their titles of editor-in-chief and creative director, respectively. Under the new management, Jarrett, and his wife, Jacclyn, the title’s publisher, are expected to exit the company, sources said. The firm is currently meeting with candidates to become editor in chief, they added.
“It is very exciting to be growing this modern media company and one whose delivery of the top trendsetters in the millennial market is unsurpassed,” said Fields. “We see this purchase as taking a profitable, highly visible property, Nylon, and by merging it with FashionIndie.com, create a unique brand in the media community for marketers.”
Nylon—whose median age of 25—has a circulation of 225,000, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.