C&C Classifieds Nº26: The Narrative Group, HelloGiggles, CMG & more!
New week. New opportunities.
Opportunities come and go, but with a new week here and a new round of C&C Classifieds to brighten up your Wednesdays, we have opportunities for you, galore!
This week, we have brand new classifieds for you from our friends The Narrative Group, Hello Giggles, Clique Media Group, Away, and more from CAA and Universal Music Group. Get a sneak peek at this week's classifieds below, and sign up below to get access to the full list of classifieds!
If you have signed up for access to the C&C Classifieds before, click here.
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Fashion: Katherine Power & Hillary Kerr, Clique Media Group
This article is part of our Create & Cultivate 100 List created in collaboration with KEDS, you can view the full Fashion List Here.
The media moguls.
Leaving a cushy and respectable editorial job at a top fashion magazine to become an entrepreneur might sound completely terrifying and insane to most people, but Hillary Kerr and Katherine Power are certainly not most people. The fashion world power duo met while working for Elle Magazine, on the set of the show "Project Runway." They struck up a friendship and bonded immediately; within a year they had started Who What Wear as an answer to the lack of great editorial content online at the time. This was 2006, when MySpace was king, and most leading fashion magazines had only splash pages as websites, with no content at all. Kerr and Power saw an opportunity and took a leap: they left their jobs at Elle and launched a newsletter which is now, arguably, The Clique Media Group media empire.
As seasoned veterans of fashion editorial, Kerr and Power brought the professionalism and expertise of print media to their web content. But a big part of the reason for Who What Wear’s wild success was the duo’s early embracing of social media; though it was a fledgling medium at the time, Kerr and Power used MySpace to launch a series of videos promoting their new site. Thanks to that, the pair’s own strong networks, and the site’s uniquely friendly and approachable take on fashion, Who What Wear’s readership swelled. Kerr and Power have harnessed the power of social all along the way, and today Who What Wear boasts over 2.3 million Instagram followers. In fact, it was their enthusiasm and savvy for all things digital that led them to eventually step up their entrepreneurial game by launching Clique Media Group, not only as a parent company for Who What Wear but as a tech, commerce, and content company that would allow them to pursue all their digital dreams. In 2017, CMG is a formidable global media, marketing, and consumer brands company that is venture-backed (Amazon is an investor) and regularly touted by Forbes Magazine. Aside from Who What Wear, their current portfolio includes the home and lifestyle site myDomaine and beauty platform Byrdie, the cutting-edge social only Gen Z network Obsessee, and their most recent acquisition, the website CollegeFashionista. They’ve also entered the consumer space, partnering with Target to offer an ongoing monthly collection of clothing and accessories inspired by street style trends that launched in January of 2016. The collaboration has been so popular that Kerr and Power hope to expand their reach in terms of consumer goods. “We’ve found incredible success with our Who What Wear clothing and accessories line at Target,” says Power. “In fact, we just expanded with Who What Wear shoes that follow the same thesis of fast fashion informed by data from our savvy millennial reader. So I’d love to see us expand in that area of consumer brands as I know we can give consumers what they’re looking for.”
What else is the power pair currently excited about? “I'm obsessed with the Obsessee girl and world; the combination of Gen-Z and social-only content makes every part of my brain excited,” says Kerr. For Power, it’s virtual reality. “We’re always trying new things and work to stay on the cutting edge of all technological advancements, so it’s certainly on our radar,” she tells us. “In fact, we’ve already been using VR as event activations. For our Obsessee pop-up at The Grove this summer, we partnered with Samsung, who had ambassadors bring headsets for guests to view fashion, music, and art virtual reality videos. People loved it!”
“I’d like to build this company to the giant I know it can be."
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It may not seem like Kerr or Power has literally one free second for anything outside of running their empire, but these superwomen squeeze in extra-curriculars to keep themselves sane. For Kerr, a self-described “word nerd,” it’s reading, and for Power, it’s exercise. “I love my daily 6 a.m. workout class at Tracy Anderson’s studio in L.A,” she says. “It keeps my brain functioning clearly.” For her part, Kerr has made peace with being a workaholic. “I take better care of myself, emotionally and physically,” she says of the time since the two first started out over a decade ago. “I've finally realized that I cannot separate my brain from work, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I firmly believe that you never know where a good idea will come from, and that means staying alert, open, and engaged with the world around you.” But don’t make the mistake of assuming Kerr and Power are content with staying where they are professionally. The same ambition and confidence that spurred them to take a risk and start Who What Wear back in 2006 is still here, and bigger than ever. “I’d like to build this company to the giant I know it can be,” Power says of their future goals. “You only get this close to something so big maybe once or twice in a lifetime, so I’m going to swing for the fences.”
Styling provided by Reservoir LA. Hair and makeup provided by Glamsquad. Photography courtesy of Light Lab and Woodnote Photography.
Why Nicole Richie Would Make the Best BFF
As if you don't have reasons enough already.
Inventor. Artist. Ex-Girlfriend. Australian. These are all titles Nicole Richie took on in season 2 of her VH1 series "Candidly Nicole." But while it's universally accepted that Richie is a quick-witted comedic Queen, capable of the above and more, she also takes her businesses (multiple), her friendships (more than multiple), and her role as mother (just 2) very seriously.
Almost nine years ago Richie launched House of Harlow 1960, shortly after the birth of her first child, becoming mom and mom to her career simultaneously.
“At that time I had so many fears,” she says. “I had a newborn baby. I was twenty-six. I was starting a new business. I was one of three people that I knew with a baby that was my age. I had no idea what the future would bring. I didn’t even know if I wanted to turn it into a full-blown brand yet.”
Which, is exactly what is has become. The initial 50-piece costume jewelry line has developed into ready-to-wear, eyewear, footwear, and handbags. The most recent collection was released in partnership with Revolve.
Though entrepreneur wasn't exactly a role she imagined for herself, Richie got a taste of that business life, liked it, and last November held the inaugural Pearl xChange in Los Angeles. It is her live-event series for women who want to make connections, share knowledge, and listen to speakers like Gwyneth Paltrow and Marianne Williamson drop some.
At first glance, it’s very similar to Create & Cultivate. That’s not a problem for Richie, who was a keynote at Create & Cultivate Atlanta in conversation with HelloGiggles co-founder Sophia Rossi.
“This is a perfect example,” Richie says, “of how two people in the same business with the same interests understand that we each have strengths. Joining together only helps us spread our wings, reach even more people, build the energy and make the vibration stronger.”
“Joining together only helps us spread our wings, build the energy and make the vibration stronger.”
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It’s the matter of competition being able to life us higher, together, not further apart and it’s a direction she’s focussing a lot of her energy. “I am able to see other people’s strengths where I have weaknesses. That’s not putting myself down, that’s understanding who I am and wanting to build myself up and make myself stronger. I’m so excited to be a part of the Create & Cultivate conference and spend time with other like-minded people who have been in this business longer than me.”
This approach is a through-line with Richie and many of her successful friends.
“Rachel Zoe is an example of a woman where there are a lot of parallels in our careers,” says Richie. “That being said, do we look at each other as competition? Absolutely not. Rachel is Rachel and I’m me. We’re two individuals. We have different lives. I’m so happy for her and I love going out and supporting her."
“Rachel has been very open with me,” she adds, “and this is very important to say, she’s been so open about the ins and outs of her business. She's never once said, ‘You’re on your own.’”
This approach has only helped them both. You can do it by yourself, Richie explains, “but you’re really limiting yourself. I can only get so far on my own."
She brings up longtime friend Sophia Rossi, who likewise understands the sisterhood of business. “Her business is HelloGiggles," says Richie. "It’s online, it’s so different than what I do, but we have found ways to collaborate and I’m really passionate about my friendship with her. She’s somebody who is a true connector. She has no skin in the fashion game, but she loves me and she wants to see her friends succeed.” Friends like Clique Media co-founder Katherine Power. “Sophia started a few years after Katherine, but she is the first person to say, ‘I just copied everything Katherine did. I listened to everything she said and she was my mentor.’”
“Those girls are the perfect example of two friends going after kind of the same thing but who have done nothing but support each other and maintain the closeness. You’re never going to produce the same thing, it’s just not possible. We don’t have the same souls.”
With Pearl xChange Richie wants to take this notion a step further. “When I hear other girls say, ‘Oh, I don’t have a lot of girlfriends,’ or ‘I don’t trust other girls,” I, personally, don’t understand what that means,” she says. “We have to get over that. It has to be a thing of the past and it’s really important to me. To say, or ask, ‘How can I help?’ ‘What can I give?’ and ‘What is the one thing that I have that I can offer?’”
She brings up advice Marianne Williams gave the audience at the first Pearl xChange. “She spoke a lot about us understanding our own strengths and how that takes more confidence than we know. Feeling good within ourselves about what we have to offer— that’s harder than a lot of people think.”
Adding, “There is no how-to book, but the idea of ‘this is how you do it’ can be thrown out. You can create your own way.”
“The idea of ‘this is how you do it’ can be thrown out. You can create your own way.”
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In her thirties Nicole feels more confident and secure in her decisions, her "own way," than ever before. That means exploring and pushing herself and finding new sides of who she is. “You really have to put yourself out there, give everything that you have, and do it authentically.”
“It’s been a slow and steady process of me finding the confidence in myself to take the reigns of my own business and my own life.”
“I think the key is to find the thing that you love and figure out how to turn that into a business. And just be that. Don’t worry about being anything else. Then you’ll feel like your life has alignment and true flow.”
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C&C Classifieds Nº9: Beat The June Gloom With A New Job
Put that resumé to work, work, work, work, work.
Each day, we see more and more of our readers asking for more job leads to get them in the right direction to the next step in their career. We've heard you loud and clear, which is why now we're doing our C&C Classifieds twice a month!
This month, we've got rad jobs from Mailchimp, Facebook, Airbnb, Revolve, Pandora, and many others for this round of C&C Classifieds. To get full access to this month's 100+ listings, enter your name and email below and check them out!