The Persuader Blog Highlights from the publisher’s blog.

LUCIRE started in 1997 after a year’s research, though its roots originate earlier still. When a freelance designer, Jack Yan had wanted his own fashion magazine because he looked up to their quality—but at the time, it seemed impossible to launch one.
   After successfully launching one of the earliest business magazines on the web in 1994 (CAP Online), he felt that the internet was the best and most financially viable medium for a fashion magazine. However, it had to be done right.
   Research in 1996 concluded that it would be foolhardy for the new magazine, which went under the development title of Visages, to be global and go head-to-head with Lumière, Fashion Internet, NYStyle.com and Hachette Filipacchi’s Elle. (Only Elle survives as a regularly updated title.) Therefore, Lucire, as it was named—the company found it was easy to type and had no negative connotations in any language, and thought then that it was a coined name—was launched on October 20, 1997, 6 A.M. EST as an Asia–Pacific title.
   Circumstances—namely an initial dearth of relevant stories—compelled the team to look further and by 1998 it realized that Lucire had to be “global”. Regular New York content was added the following year.
   Throughout this period, Lucire received countless requests that went along the lines of, ‘Please post me a sample copy of your magazine.’ The public believed that Lucire was a print title that happened to have a web presence: it was hard for some readers to fathom that such quality journalism resided exclusively on the web.
   In early 2000, Lucire proposed a licensing programme, very similar to the one on offer today, to a print publication in difficulty. Nothing resulted from the negotiations.
   There were more plans to go to print as early as 2001 after the original TV venture, Lucire Live, was unsuccessful despite a New York Fashion Week launch. Instead, the magazine released a PDA edition and increasingly formalized its presences in New York and London. Also in 2001, Lucire had its first hand at print: a glamorous introductory media kit was created to promote the magazine at an innovators’ speaking session to which Jack Yan was invited.
   Two thousand and three proved to be a banner year: a Webby Award nomination, further mainstreaming the brand, and a United Nations Environment Programme partnership, the first organization to receive this honour.
   In October 2003, there was a catalyst for a print counterpart. After Lucire’s second stint as Official Internet Partner of L’Oréal New Zealand Fashion Week (LNZFW), the company put together an “ebook” (or more accurately, the Lucire–LNZFW Supplement): a special PDF magazine with practically every collection from the LNZFW catwalks. This met with success considering it was not part of the magazine’s original LNZFW plans.
   Apeing a print title in layout and with the magazine’s fair, balanced fashion coverage, the LNZFW Supplement proved that the workflows and content worked, even at a high resolution.
   Lucire was launched in print in New Zealand in October 2004, in Romania in May 2005, and in Thailand in February 2008, with a special US issue on Zinio from November 2005, making it the first web title to branch into print internationally.