High end business magazine to launch

Tyler Brule, who a decade ago founded glossy magazine Wallpaper, is to launch a new magazine called Monocle, a high-end business and cultural magazine.

According to a report in The Observer, Monocle will, like Wallpaper, be based in London and be sold worldwide, with offices in Tokyo, New York and Zurich.

It will target wealthy opinion formers. As well as offering business coverage and culture it will feature luxury goods, which will give it access to a lucrative advertising market. The paper said that Brule has raised as much as £5m from private investors to fund Monocle, which will publish 10 times a year with a price tag of £5 and aim for a circulation of 150,000.

“We have been influenced by the success of The Economist and the BBC in North America, but we will be bringing stories to life with our writing and reportage and looking ahead a bit, which is very different from what The Economist does,” Brule told The Observer.

The magazine was first mooted in July 2004, when Brule announced he was working on the launch of a “trendy Economist” through the Winkreative consultancy he had founded earlier that year.

The London-based French-Canadian Brule was 27, and a former BBC researcher, when in 1996 he launched interior design and lifestyle Wallpaper, which was aimed at style-conscious bachelors. Brule sold Wallpaper in 1997 to Time Inc. for a reported £1m. Brule departed in 2002 after a disagreement over expenses, reported to related to a claim for a £6 taxi fare.

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