Jeff Chang (pictured), orchestrating a business transformation for Chinese magazine publisher Trends Media, is a man in a hurry, even though the group’s portfolio – including local versions of international mastheads such as Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Good Housekeeping and Men’s Health – seems to be bearing up well.

There is little pressure for Chang’s initiatives to deliver financial returns in the short term, especially as competition within China’s lifestyle magazine sector, made up of a handful of major players, is relatively stable.

A more pressing concern however is shoring up relationships and signing up new partners, from bloggers to businesses. These ties will give Trends an edge in a new digital ecosystem where content, commerce and community overlap.

“For me, the most important thing is not the revenue,” Chang says. “It is the exclusivity.”

Chang has been busy recruiting fashion bloggers, for instance, providing them with distribution and a share of revenues on a new publishing platform Trends has developed.

“If they work with me, it means they cannot work with others,” Chang adds.

“I want to pre-empt. That’s why I rushed to do a lot of things which help me get a foot on the ground. The idea is not to make money, it is to pre-empt resources. Then I can figure out how to do it.”

Reaching past print

Trends began life as a single magazine in 1993, launched by business-minded journalist Liu Jiang with backing from China’s Ministry of Tourism as well as US publishers Hearst and IDG.

Liu remains group president to this day. Chang, Trends’ VP of strategy and business development, was brought on board as part of a major group restructure in 2010, with a mandate to prepare for inevitable changes in the publishing landscape.

One early priority was extending the reach of Trends’ titles, each operated as separate business units, beyond print into other media.

Part of this has been about fostering a richer online presence – including iTrends, a social network for opinion leaders incorporating Trends content, as well as Newsstand, an aggregation platform for in-house apps.

Chang has pushed into other media too, with seven branded TV shows – each aligned with a particular magazine – carried on near-national satellite TV stations. Meanwhile, a lifestyle-oriented radio slot, which draws on multiple titles for its content, airs in Beijing and Shanghai.

Chang wants more. The bigger the audience, the greater the cultural sway Trends has in fashion and lifestyle circles, improving the odds for new ventures in the future.

“One of the objectives for my role is to diversify our revenue sources,” Chang explains. “Number two is to extend our influence.”

'The goal is to transform'

The groundwork is starting to pay off, with Trends forging strategic partnerships with heavyweights such as Samsung and Pepsi over the past 18 months, in the areas of paid online content and ecommerce respectively.

The overall journey, however, remains a long haul.

Trends’ traditional lifestyle content business still has value in an interconnected world – as a digital meeting place for consumers, brands and industry movers and shakers.

At the same time, media can also serve as a cornerstone for new service-based businesses, ranging from education to investment, and ecommerce to marketing services.

“The goal is to transform Trends Media Group into Trends Group,” Chang says. “Media should be one of the pillars, rather than the whole pillar.” 

While advertising delivers the lion’s share of group revenue today, Chang has been busy sizing up alternatives. In 2011, he set up an investment team with an annual RMB100 million (US$16 million) fund, to keep tabs on emerging business models and technologies.

These investments also help Trends tap hard-to-get resources. One portfolio company, for example, now makes the company’s apps.

The team had taken minority stakes in seven companies to end-2013, from US fashion blogging site Monogram to Chinese online florist Roseonly.

More are in the pipeline, but good, relevant deals are hard to find. “We have a dedicated fund, but we have never used it all,” Chang says. “We have probably allocated too much for the moment, but it seems to be okay.”

Difficulties in finding investment opportunities prompted Chang to make the team part of a larger innovation hub for fashion start-ups last September, in collaboration with media agency network GroupM and US research center, MIT Media Lab.

The new initiative, which fast-tracks promising concepts into pilots that may merit further investment, helps raise Trends’ profile in the start-up sector.

Meanwhile, a new website incubated by Chang, Fashion Insider, also doubles up as a promotional platform for startups, extending the net further.

Nonetheless, theories about digital transformation are easier to articulate than put into practice.

“Everybody understands what can be done,” Chang says. “The fundamental difference is how. I don’t think we need to innovate anything – we just need to do it better.”

One case in point is China’s highly competitive ecommerce space. This sector is of particular interest to women’s glossies, often regarded as alternative catalogs for the latest clothing lines.

Magazine sites will struggle to attract enough shoppers to compete with pure-play ecommerce sites, although deeper consumer understanding could make online retail more attractive in the future.

Chang wonders whether there may be another, curational role that magazines can play, that builds on existing editorial skills.

In conjunction with suppliers and retailers, magazine brands could potentially nudge readers down the path to purchase, offline as well as online.

Nonetheless, that’s the tricky bit. “We have invested in a company in Silicon Valley doing the content-to-commerce business,” Chang says.

“We learned quite a lot. It’s not when you have content, then you will naturally drive to commerce. It depends on the engagement, on understanding, on relevance in terms of location. We need more detail to execute, and we don’t have that detail yet.”

Win Friends, Influence People

In the midst of all this digital activity, Trends still managed to launch another magazine at the end of 2013 – Harper’s Bazaar Art.

Trends will continue to build its print portfolio, as new segments emerge, Chang notes. Given the dynamism in China’s art market, launching Harper’s Bazaar Art was an imperative.

“Wherever it makes sense, we won’t stop doing new magazines,” he explains. “We want to be everywhere in the lifestyle genre.” 

That said, Trends is unlikely to launch another new print publication in 2014. Executives need to prioritze as momentum behind many new business areas, which had taken a while to pick up, is entering an important stage of development.

More, for example, can be done in education, Chang speculates, a promising sphere to extend reach and influence.

This follows the launch of a new fashion and luxury management course last year, in conjunction with Beijing’s Tsinghua University, French business school HEC Paris and French fashion and design nonprofit IFM.

Meanwhile, national outreach to bloggers, in areas such as food as well as fashion, will deepen to a city level.

Chang is also eyeing a second blogging platform, this time one where writers can self-publish rather than going through Trends.

Some initiatives may not live up to their promise, he muses. What’s important, is being able to respond to those that do.

“We are still at a very early stage in terms of the new world,” Chang says. “I am not going to worry about the money for now. I am worried about the capability. If you have that, the money will come, but if you are chasing all the different money, you will lose your focus, and forget to prioritize your resources or do the right thing.” 

That, Chang argues, is short-term thinking that will undermine long-term business prospects. "It's still too early," he stresses.

"We are in the business of scarce resources – celebrities, designers, bloggers – all scarce resources. So the most important thing for me now is to pre-empt."