A New Edition
Two Highsnobiety alumni — Tom Garland, former senior director and head of strategy, and Christopher Morency, former editorial director at the nowZalando- owned streetwear site — have joined forces to launch Edition+ partners.
Billed as a “creative growth company offering up-to- date strategic blueprints to help distinctively original creative projects launch, survive and thrive,” the duo said the firm, which was partially named after the location where they first brainstormed the idea — the Edition Hotel in London — aims to disrupt the creative sector just as A24 and XL Recordings have done for the film and music industries by learning from the old guard and doing things smartly and differently for the new era.
Garland said
Edition+ partners was born out of “our shared frustrations at the general lack of speed in the industry. As the companies we used to work for become bigger and bigger on a global scale, they just weren’t able to adapt quickly enough to changing consumer mindsets and behaviors.”
“At the same time, from the heart perspective, we started to get disenfranchised with just how difficult it was for young, independent artists in different cultural fields to get their incredible work up and running, which got us thinking, it doesn’t need to be that difficult,” he added.
“A big thing to add to why we started this was because we were in the boardrooms where we were able to see how these decisions were made,” Morency said. “But at the same time, we’re still out and about on that street level. We see this huge disconnect.”
“What we want to do is to bridge that gap between creativity and commerce, and supercharge brands’ creativity to enable the commercial success to be more culturally relevant and up to date with how today’s customer shops,” he added.
Launching with six clients, which include a Lagos- based culture festival, a Stockholmbased tailoring house, an iconic denim brand and a creator economy tech solution, the duo said Edition+ partners is looking to “remedy the hardship that is felt by these young independent thinkers and help them reach prominence by voiding some of the missteps that are completely avoidable.”
During his time at Highsnobiety, Garland worked on cultural programs and campaigns for more than 100 brand partners such as Dries Van
Noten, Moncler, Bayern Munich and Nike across the luxury, fashion, sports, retail and music industries.
Most recently the chief brand officer at Nanushka and Sunnei’s parent company Vanguards, Morency will also spearhead SOTA, or State of the Art, the content arm of Edition+ partners that’s touted to be “a business card to showcase how we think without having any restraints.”
Coinciding with the company launch, SOTA will gradually release its inaugural research thesis “The Next Big Bang: The Brand Universe Solution to Growth” on Substack in the next eight weeks.
Six months in the making, the study included findings from a survey with 350 industry participants, and insights from more than 50 fashion brand founders and executives including Ledger’s chief experience officer Ian Rogers; Palm Angels’ Francesco Ragazzi; Yoon Ahn from Ambush; Charaf Tajer of Casablanca; Ami CEO Nicolas Santi
Weil; Ganni’s creative duo Nicolaj Reffstrup, and
Ditte Reffstrup, as well as executives from Sephora, Adidas, On Running, Gymshark, Humanrace,
Our Legacy, and emerging designers like Priya Ahluwalia, Alex Arsenault and Charlotte Knowles of Knwls, and Chet Lo.
“The report goes into great detail identifying four distinct pillars that make up a brand universe: horizontal expansion, a new approach to community segmentation, the erosion of the lines between marketing and selling methods, and being the first to embrace emerging technologies. In short, it’s a rallying cry for those who refuse to become laggards in an ever- changing world that is moving at a speed faster than ever before,” Morency said.
Equally contrarian to the company’s belief, LinkedIn will be the primary social media platform for Edition+ partners to engage with its audience and promote its reports. There won’t be a dedicated Instagram account, the duo said.
— TIANWEI ZHANG