Manchester Confidential appoints London editor amid expansion plans

Online magazine publisher Confidential Publishing has strengthened its plans to expand to new cities with the appointment of a London editor.

Casey Gillespie will oversee the launch of SohoConfidential.co.uk, which is scheduled for March 2011. Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, Confidential Publishing managing director Mark Garner said he expects to launch a site for Birmingham by the end of 2011 and confirmed reports that the network will expand to New York by September.

The Soho site will build on the success of ManchesterConfidential.co.uk, which attracts around 140,000 unique users a month and 1.7 million page views, and will initially focus on the same subject matter, in particular food and drink. News, arts, entertainment, property, business and other content sections will be added later, a release from the publisher says.

Gillespie, who is leaving her position as editor-in-chief of New York-based fashion magazine Zink Magazine, where she has worked for eight years, will join Confidential in January. She will spend three months at its Manchester office before transferring to London.

Garner, who started ManchesterConfidential as a personal website before developing it into a business, said the plans for sites covering London and New York had been discussed for the past three years. But a need to rethink the publishing network's revenue streams postponed the expansion plans, as income from advertising, particularly from the property sector, dropped off during the economic downturn falling from £95,000 a month to below £30,000.

But expansion is back on the cards as Confidential has added new revenue streams to support its titles and offices in Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds and its 30 staff. The decision to set up in London is the next stage of the business plan, Garner said. Currently the sites deal with small businesses and medium businesses, linked to national brands, who handle their own media buying, but the biggest brands have people to buy for them who are largely based in London, he explained.

"London is a marketing ploy for us ... once we've finished bombarding the media buyers in London we'll move on to Birmingham," he said.

"We've got a successful business model that's paying for itself each month. We're looking at 400,000 readers across the [north west] region. We've suddenly found ourselves from just being my personal blog to being all grown up."

Free daily newsletter

If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).