Small Is The New Big - Kinfolk Leads New Voices In Indie Publishing

By : Patrick Hanlon |  Author, Speaker, Forbes online contributor 
Follow Patrick Hanlon On Twitter : https://twitter.com/hanlonpatrick 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickhanlon/2014/05/09/millennials-find-their-voice-in-small-batch-publishing/

We’ve been spotting these magazines for the last year or more. You can find them in the aspirational retail and design shops—with names like Kinfolk, Gather, The Gourmand and ThirtyTwo.

In the crowded (and, some predict, dying) world of print, these local, regional, and international publications do not enjoy the high runs of Vogue, Cosmo and Vanity Fair. Rather, they are printed in small batches.

They are remarkably distinctive, and at the same time similar in indie style and tonality: colloquial photography displays people, food, objects, people and their objects, and natural landscapes. There are short stories, memoirs, and personal anecdotes. There may be poetry.

There are articles about people making things. There are shots of biscuits draped with glowing honey or blackberry compote, handmade fabrics, hand-forged axes, men with beards, men wearing ascots, bearded men wearing ascots, bearded men wearing ascots standing next to fresh-looking adorable women. None of them are models. They sit communally at long wooden communal tables (note that the largest demographic in America is single persons and you get a hint at the appeal of larger gatherings).

Persons being photographed may be standing in an apartment in Milan, or overlooking lush green hills in Duchess County. Everyone and everything is shot in natural light and ends up produced on 60-pound Somerset (or similar) uncoated paper.

 

Their audience is the urban hip, the artists, musicians, stylists, philosophy majors and venture capitalists who turn out code and/or humanistic values in Brooklyn, Berkeley, and the differentiated parts of Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Milan, Shanghai, Tokyo, London, and Berlin.

And we love it. We love all of it.

The publications are organic. And they are whimsy. They are collegiate in the sense of gathering together talented, interesting, collegial friends who want to be in the same place together (even if just for the promise of free food, liquor and a photo shoot).

Kinfolk is perhaps the elderly statesman of all these indie publications, and at the tender age of three, it already has a thriving readership, a cookbook, and offspring.

 

The magazine started with no capital, no investment, and was created in a dorm room by four classmates. “No magazine seemed to connect with us, in terms of ideas, inspiration, or things to do,” says co-founder and editor-in-chief Nathan Williams. “There was no ‘entertaining’ in the sense of dinner parties, or what to do with friends other than bar hopping.”

Conversations over dinner, other magazines implied, were for older people. Much older people. So over the course of ten months, working from dorm rooms at Brigham Young University’s Hawaii campus, Williams and friends Doug Bischoff, Katie Searle-Williams and Paige Bischoff, kept talking about their idea. Then they called upon their friends: writers, photographers, stylists, bloggers, and others.

“We didn’t have much money, so it was just us reaching out,” says Williams. “We all had shared ownership. The marketing was organic.”

The first Kinfolk issue launched in July, 2011, and within three weeks the website had 6 million page views.

“That community vibe felt unique at the time and helped it. We’ve never had to fund anything up front,” remarks Williams.

Other magazines may have come before it, but Kinfolk sparked a new form of lifestyle publishing that provides a broader approach to living, traveling, cooking, and discovering new things to make and do. And the appeal seems to be universal: the pub has audiences in Japan, Korea, Russia, China, Australia and Europe.

 

Recently, Kinfolk birthed a new brand called Ouur, which will be putting out apparel, homeware, publications and events of its own. The new brand has been in Japan for a few months now, and is coming to the U.S. in the next few.

Publishing in small batches has its challenges. Printing is costly, web design takes effort. But what saves this is not only the need for something other than the world’s wisest man and an alternative to disco balling—it’s the whole-hearted passion. What’s not to love about publications that idolize not only green grass and fresh sunlight, but also the simple pleasures of croakberry jam, hot biscuits and a little hand-crafted pleasure?

On the flip side: it’s not Vogue. “It’s definitely still a small business,” nods Williams. And maybe it’s better for it.