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Supermodel-turned-entrepreneur Karlie Kloss is on a mission to save legacy magazines.
With her billionaire husband, Joshua Kushner, Kloss has acquired publications including I-D and the rights to relaunch Life magazine through their Bedford Media holding company. She also led a group of investors that bought W magazine. In interviews with The Circuit with Emily Chang, Kloss said she's working to revitalize the brands with a "lean and scrappy startup" approach, while recognizing the depth of the challenge.
"I feel like I'm the person running into a burning building," Kloss said.
Magazines and other print publications have steadily lost readers and revenue in recent years as they're supplanted by social media networks and media consumption shifts online. Deep-pocketed investors from Jeff Bezos and Marc Benioff to Patrick Soon-Shiong have struggled in recent years to turn around the publications they've acquired.
Kloss said her main motivating factor is to preserve "independent small media."
"I don't think that we're going to have Facebook outcomes on this investment necessarily, but that's not my intention here," Kloss said. "My intention is to build a really viable business, but to make really meaningful work along the way."
Bedford representatives didn't offer financial details related to the businesses.
Kloss' other initiatives include "Kode with Klossy," a two-week coding course for teenage girls that aims to improve gender equality in computer science programs. She has also backed consumer brands such Coterie, which makes premium diapers, as well as luggage company Away and women's wear label Reformation. She was an early investor in online retailer StockX.
While her husband is the brother of President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, Kloss - a Democrat who supports Planned Parenthood - said she has never met the president. She recently attended the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
"I think it's possible to have relationships with people who you politically don't align with," she said. "I stand up for the things that I care about with every dollar I have, vote I have, voice I have. And I think we all have to do that."
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