THE DISH ON DAILY CANDY
Byline: Janet Ozzard
NEW YORK — Dany Levy had had it with magazines.
The 28-year-old editor had spent the better part of a decade working first at New York magazine, then at Self and the prototype of Lucky. But the magazine world had lost its appeal, so Levy decided to get serious and get an MBA. She was halfway to Columbia Business School when she was struck by an idea.
“I was studying for my GMATs and subscribing to daily sites like a.word.a.day.com and TheStreet.com,” said the soft-spoken Levy. “And I thought, why isn’t anybody doing [daily messages] for lifestyle?”
So much for business school. Levy took her tuition money and put it into building a subscriber content-driven Web site whose mission would be “to weed through the schlock on the Internet, to follow up on the restaurants you read about in ‘Dining Out’ or the books they write about in Harper’s Bazaar,” she said. “I didn’t have a business model, I wasn’t thinking about revenue stream. I was just thinking about the product.”
What she did have was a point of view, plus a sizable list of contacts and resources from her days at New York magazine, where she revamped the “Sales & Bargains” page and created the “Gotham Style” feature.
“My idea for this site was that I could go to Daffy’s and see that they had this sick stash of Hanro underwear and go back to my office and upload it immediately,” she said. The site wouldn’t just be another text-y listing on the screen: it would have a distinctive look — artist Ruben Toledo did a series of original watercolors for Levy — as well as a voice and attitude.
As for the name, Levy said: “I registered about a gazillion and one names, like urbancrayon and dailyscore. I still own them all. But I ended up having to buy DailyCandy. Actually, I thought it had great potential for getting candy sponsors, like Nestle. That hasn’t really worked out.”
The first DailyCandy went out March 6, 2000 to about 700 subscribers, mostly friends, and friends of friends who had been contacted by e-mail about the impending launch. There are now 50,000 subscribers around the country — although most are in New York — and 35 percent of are in media.
But Levy is quick to point out that she’s not some dilettante editor who thought the Internet sounded like fun. More than a year into her venture, there are only three full-time staffers and Levy often finds herself doing ad sales — which she would rather stay out of — and chasing checks from recalcitrant advertisers, like the one who recently bought a banner ad after much coercion and then threatened not to pay unless his business was listed on the site.
But the site has built a cachet, and its imprimatur has impact; sales for a collection of New Yorker stories skyrocketed the day the book was mentioned on DailyCandy. By Wednesday morning, Amazon.com — which has a sponsored link on DailyCandy — had sold 12,000 copies. But even more importantly, “DailyCandy creates a buzz,” said Brian McLendon, publicity manager for Random House and Villard Books, which published the collection. “Media people see it. Dany has a vision for her style and she makes no apologies for it, and that’s created loyalty.”
“We had people coming into the store for weeks afterward, with the printout of DailyCandy in their hands,” said Laura Mady, co-owner of Boucher Jewelry, which has a store here and an e-tail Web site. DailyCandy also brought in new customers to Boucher’s site from as far away as California, she said.
The question is, of course, is DailyCandy making money? Not quite yet. Levy has “sponsored links” from companies such as Amazon.com, which gives DailyCandy a percentage of any sales that come its way via the site. There are also banner ads from companies, and more recently the site has been doing sponsored events like a recent reading with author Malcolm Gladwell. Plus, DailyCandy has branched out into print with a weekly column in Hamptons magazine and TV with spots on local cable. But that’s not exactly a flood of income and Levy is very cautious about letting DailyCandy “endorse” anything that’s been paid for.
There are other business models. Salon.com, for example, is trying to move from a free site to subscriptions, with limited success, and Levy is skeptical that her fans would really want to pay for DailyCandy. But she has other ideas.
“I’ve thought about doing market research because I have a good subscriber base that likes to answer questions. And I could write the questions in that DailyCandy tone,” she said. Levy has also been approached to do a book, a sort of “The DailyCandy Girl’s Guide to Life,” with chapters on crucial topics like shopping and men.
Her biggest asset, though, is strictly off limits. Levy has a gold mine in the form of a subscriber base of 50,000 affluent, urban subscribers with demographics to die for. Other Web sites have made a bundle selling limited access to their list — Sephora, for example, paid to access defunct Eve.com’s list — but that’s not an option.
“Would I sell my list?” Levy said. “No. Absolutely not. Do you want me sending you spam? But I would do something in our voice, like ‘DailyCandy’s picks from Sephora.’ I’d make it very clear to our readers, though, exactly what it was. And I would charge for access before I’d go under.”
As far as she is concerned, DailyCandy has long-term potential.
“I hope to be a brand,” said Levy, that could be spun out for various consumer ventures. “If this is going to last, and have legs, it has to have a larger home, a bigger infrastructure, with more than three people.”