Breakfast with Highsnobiety’s founder David Fischer

The founder of Highsnobiety has kept his platform a developing story since launching it in Berlin in 2005, while he was still a kid studying business administration. Starting as a Blogspot project, Highsnobiety has steadily grown into a publishing house, creative consultancy and curated e-commerce platform over the past two decades. That trajectory gained them the notice of giants, including e-commerce platform Zalando, who acquired a majority stake in the business back in 2022. It marked a moment that spoke to the power of narrative and storytelling within a shopping environment; how editorialising a commercial experience gives a competitive edge. Despite his success, Fischer remains humble throughout our conversation, and reiterates how that success is due to really understanding and honing in on Highsnobiety’s audience, that having a values-driven business helps separate the wheat from the chaff, and why he’s never been interested in being big or mainstream. Keeping a challenging media landscape in mind, we also question his responsibility being a media owner, and the importance of setting good examples for an often young audience. We order flat whites and dive right into conversation.

You started Highsnobiety before YouTube launched.

I did, two months before YouTube. Not nearly as successful, but we were earlier. It was just a different time; I started the platform on Blogspot. Truthfully I signed up not because I wanted to blog about fashion. It was more like, “Oh blogs, what are that?” I signed up just to see how the thing worked, so I had to put some things on it.

What did you put on the blog? 

It was things that I liked. I really stumbled into it during my last semester at university, and after a few weeks I arrived at this point where I was so motivated to find things that nobody else found before. To discover new things and share them, but I didn’t even know if anybody actually saw what I was doing. There was no social media to promote content, and there were no analytics that came with Blogspot which would tell me what was going on. So it was very crafty. After a couple of months I suddenly figured out, “Oh this other blog has a counter [widget], they actually know how many people come.” Then I clicked on the counter and you could grab the HTML. I put it on the blog and it’d tell how many visitors would come. Like 200 people came a day, I thought that was crazy. There was this really interesting energy between being super motivated and… I could basically not sleep anymore, I was so motivated to find stuff. It was like this black hole that I got sucked into. I was on forums and other blogs, retail websites – just finding cool things and putting them up. Then, of course, suddenly with this counter I was also motivated for the number to go up. I wanted to reach more people; 500 people a day, 1000 people a day. And yet at the same time it was so unlikely that this could ever be anything. There was nobody in Europe at the time making money with a blog. I was basically just fucking around, thinking this will never be anything.

At which point did you start thinking about it more in business terms?

Interestingly, the business did take off quite fast. Not in a big way, but some guy came around and was like, “Hey, I have this online store, can I put a banner on your blog?” I’d say, “Yes, sure.” He’d ask, “How much do you want for it?” I’d say, “Fifty bucks a month.” And he was like, “It’s a little expensive, but you know what? I’ll give you vouchers for the shop.” That’s how it started. So every three months I’d have 150 bucks and I could choose a pair of shoes or something. Eventually, Karmaloop – who were the big online streetwear retailer in the US at the time – took the lead banner and booked it for 12 months, for $400 a month. When you’re a student and you have an extra $400 a month… That’s a pretty good deal. These things came quite fast in the first six months or so. Fast but at quite a low level generally speaking. For quite a while it wasn’t like, “I’m building a business here.”

“From 2005 until 2012, I was blogging seven days a week. I was sleeping five hours a night, and there was really no vacation without writing. I had four or five freelancers here or there.” – David Fischer

When did you realise you were building a business?

Nine months in I decided, “You know what, instead of finding a proper job, I’m gonna try this.” That was kind of the first big decision because I was 23 and didn’t have much to lose. I talked to my parents about it as well. My dad said, “Yeah, try, but give yourself a timeline. Say two years and if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, then you also have to move on.” That’s sort of how I went about it and did a bunch of jobs next to the blog. I helped an American streetwear brand to sell to European shops; I got a bit of commission here and there.

For how long was it just you?

It was just me for probably two years. For quite a long time I only had freelancers working with me; nobody was actually full-time, nobody getting medical care and insurance. Just like, $1000 for this person for this amount of time per month. From 2005 until 2012, I was blogging seven days a week. I was sleeping five hours a night, and there was really no vacation without writing. I had four or five freelancers here or there.

“I was writing 40 articles a day. Researching, writing, editing, photoshopping, redesigning the website – it was all me by hand.” – David Fischer

Why did you hire somebody?

I got a little frustrated being so caught up in the hamster wheel of blogging, blogging, blogging. A few business things here and there. I almost didn’t see the end of it anymore. I was writing 40 articles a day. Researching, writing, editing, photoshopping, redesigning the website – it was all me by hand. I wouldn’t want to miss it for the world, but I got frustrated. And then I was like, “In five years I’ll be writing a hundred articles a day? That can’t be it.” So I realised that I needed to bring in people that would take over some things from me. Almost immediately when the first person came in, I was like, “Do me a favour, create a rate card for our sponsored posts, do this and this, talk to some clients.” It was like the lights went on, and I realised it worked really well. Then three months later came the next person, two months later next, next, next. The business had been doing quite well, especially for a one-man-show with a bunch of freelancers. I never did anything with that money; I kept it in the business, so I was actually capable of bankrolling an expansion by myself. I started 2012 with zero people and finished with 12 employees.

“I realised that working as a team is much more fun than working by yourself, and you just get to do much cooler things. It wasn’t so much about more money, it was about the things that the money allowed us to do.” – David Fischer

That’s quite a jump, from 0 to managing a team of that size.

It was so obvious that I couldn’t do all these things myself. It was a real awakening for me as well, and I was really motivated again. It was 10-15 people in the first year, 30 the next, 60 the next. I realised that working as a team is much more fun than working by yourself, and you just get to do much cooler things. It wasn’t so much about more money, it was about the things that the money allowed us to do. That was exciting. You know, doing a print magazine, hosting events, doing some of our own products, doing bigger content productions.

“Nobody does things how we do them. There’s other magazines, retailers, and fashion brands, but nobody brings all of these things together.” – David Fischer

Did your motivation for doing Highsnobiety change throughout the years?

It didn’t change. My motivation is that I love working creatively. I don’t want to frame it selfishly, because it really isn’t, but it allows me to meet the most incredible people in the world in a very genuine way. To tell their stories, to collaborate with them on products, to host events with them. It’s a little bit like David’s brain turned into a business [laughs]. I dare say our business today doesn’t exist like that anywhere else. Nobody does things how we do them. There’s other magazines, retailers, and fashion brands, but nobody brings all of these things together.

SSENSE? They just started from the other end – you started with media and went into retail, they started with retail and went into media. 

Yes, they do a bit of storytelling now for sure, but again, we do so much more. We have the magazine, we have our dot-com and social channels, we have our own product brand, we have our own suite of product collaborations, we’re consultant to many brands, we do collaborations for the brands. When you see Dries van Noten x Stüssy, that was us.

I do find it interesting that Highsnobiety and SSENSE are successful while more established fashion media like Condé Nast are really struggling. 

I think we’re successful because of the same reason, to be honest. Both brands know exactly who they are speaking to, and never risk losing that. If you go 5-10 years back, the only way to grow as a more traditional media brand was to grow your reach. It was very simple: you have more reach, so you have more digital media inventory that you can monetize. At some point we realised that we’re actually chasing the wrong tail with our business. Because we’ll never be big.

“What we realised is that actually we’re selling influence within a very specific group of people.” – David Fischer

Even with Zalando’s help?

Big is Google or Facebook. Can we get bigger? Yes. If you’re one of our clients and you want to buy reach, then we’re the wrong place, because we don’t have it the way Google or Facebook have. We realised that there was a problem: defining ourselves through reach. So we said, “Okay, but if we’re not selling reach, then what are we selling?” What we realised is that actually we’re selling influence within a very specific group of people. We became super focused on a very specific audience and then decided, “Okay, let’s do everything for that audience.”

It’s interesting, we do the same.

It’s super focused. We always suggest not changing that, but rather figure out what else you can do for those guys. We do events, talent, strategy services, creative services, media, everything. Whereas other brands are like, “We focus on making the best shirt.” Or, “We only do shoes.” We do all of these things, but we focus on the space that we’re in which we call ‘new luxury’, and a very specific consumer that we call the ‘cultural pioneer’. That’s where we find our focus. The minute that we figured that out for ourselves, we grew faster than ever before as a business. We became so hyper focused and we started going to our brand partners and were like, “We do everything for this person. If you want to reach that person or that person, then don’t work with us.” It was really interesting to see the brands not shy away from that, but be like, “That’s exactly what I need, and the person I want to talk to.” That was really interesting.

“We raised money in 2018 and a bit more in 2019 and 2020. Then we saw how quickly you fall into the ‘trap’ of being bound to investors. Because essentially they’re giving you a lot of money, and they really want you to spend all that money as well. It was about growth, growth, growth. It was a bit of a devil’s cycle.” – David Fischer

Did you need to raise money at any point?

We did raise money in 2018. So the business was 13 years old, 13 years profitable. Because if you don’t have an investor, you need to be profitable. We actually raised money at the time because we wanted to move into e-commerce. We did our earlier expansion into the agency services and digital storytelling with our own means. But we knew that if we had to take stock, we had to grow our tech team. Because once you move into e-commerce, it’s not just designing and programming a blog; you’re getting into credit card processing, customer service, things like that. We knew that was a big risk to take, so we wanted to raise money for that. We raised money in 2018 and a bit more in 2019 and 2020. Then we saw how quickly you fall into the ‘trap’ of being bound to investors. Because essentially they’re giving you a lot of money, and they really want you to spend all that money as well. It was about growth, growth, growth. It was a bit of a devil’s cycle.

Do you regret it?

No. But we were also extremely lucky, because we raised so late in our journey. We were already an existing business that was making money, and of a certain size, so I remained in control even though we brought investors in. I never gave up the majority of the business, so I always called the shots. That’s why in 2020 we said, “If we continue to raise money now, I’m now gonna be in the minority, and we don’t want that to happen.” So we stopped and focused on building a great profitable business. That worked quite well.

“Most people assumed that because Zalando took over, it’d explode our e-commerce. But to be honest, that was never even the plan. The plan was always for us to help Zalando with brand marketing and storytelling.” – David Fischer

Then Zalando happened. 

Yes, that happened in 2022. The beginning of Covid was like, “What the fuck, what’s gonna happen?” I think pretty quickly the world realised, “Okay, everything is shut down so the only thing we can do is digital.” So our business actually started growing really fast. In 2020 we finished okay, in 2021 we almost doubled our business, and in 2022 we continued to grow really fast. With that energy in the digital space, quite a few people started approaching us. There were three or four companies coming to us, all wanting to talk about buying us. We wanted to at least see what was out there. In the years before, there was occasionally interest, but it was one person interested here and there, and either it didn’t work out, it wasn’t interesting, or didn’t make sense. And now you could feel there was a lot of energy around it. So we said, “Okay, we have to at least see what this is. How much money would we get? Who would buy us? What would happen?” We had to take a real look.

We started talking to a lot more companies, and it’s funny because there were companies where you’d imagine it would be such an obvious match. Maybe Condé Nast would’ve been an obvious match in the publishing space. But the most obvious matches were the most boring conversations. You could see that the other side didn’t have any imagination of all the cool things we could do together. Or you could feel that they’d change everything about us. I didn’t want to change anything, I just wanted to continue on our path. Zalando was fully aligned with that from the very first second. We talked to most big publishers and realised they were not interesting businesses anymore. They don’t have any imagination of how you can do things in a much more interesting way nowadays. Everything is about streamlining, cutting costs; we didn’t want to be in an environment like that. And the retailers were actually the most interesting ones that we were talking to. They were big and making a lot of revenue but understood nothing about speaking to a consumer; engagement and storytelling – something that we knew everything about. That became really quickly the most interesting bucket of partners that we started speaking to.

If you would’ve asked me, “Who would you sell to?”, it would’ve been a hundred percent to an American company. Because most of our business was in the US. But we ended up selling to the guy across town [both companies were founded in Berlin], which was really funny. We spent a lot of time with them; their business is still founder-led. It was a conversation between founders, which was really pleasant. We were very well-aligned. I love the fact that they understand that they’re really world-class in something other than we are. These two things are very complementary. We can learn a tonne from them, but they can also learn a tonne from us. Interestingly, most people assumed that because Zalando took over, it’d explode our e-commerce. But to be honest, that was never even the plan. The plan was always for us to help Zalando with brand marketing and storytelling.

What frustrates me a bit about contemporary media is that at the moment we take little responsibility for the content we publish. It’s often driven by what the consumer asks for. Like, “They want more sugar, so we’ll give them more sugar.” 

It’s a very hard balance to strike. On one hand you are giving the audience what they think they want, or what they do want, in many ways. But also giving the audience what you think they should get. I think we sometimes do a better job, and sometimes do a worse job at it. I think we are a platform that gives a voice to important topics. That may be sustainability or diversity; all kinds of important topics and issues that we feel need to be addressed. Do we do it enough? Probably not. I think part of it is human, in a sense. The same way a sixteen year old today has a vintage t-shirt in their closet and a brand-new pair of Nike sneakers, and is caught in that mix of feeling a responsibility to their environment and the planet, and at the same time – being a sixteen-year-old – they really want a new pair of Nike shoes to be as cool as their friends. I think the same is a bit true for us. Sometimes you want to give a platform to creativity, and sometimes you want to give a platform to sustainability. Ideally you bring it all together and you don’t have to compromise. I think for a long time it felt like a compromise. Increasingly less so. But yeah, it’s a balance that you constantly need to strike, and remind yourself of what is important. Being aware that it’s not perfect and that it can be better.

The word authenticity gets brought up a lot lately, and I don’t really believe that the media can be authentic. What does authenticity mean to you? 

It depends on what you want to be authentic about. I think where we consider ourselves authentic is in who we are to our reader and who we are in the world that we live in. I find it authentic for us to be writing about the things we’re writing about, because we have been writing about some of these things literally since 2005. When we write about Stüssy today, I’ve written about that in the first week I started Highsnobiety. We’ve remained focused on our space. I think that makes us authentic, in a sense. I think it depends a little bit on where your authenticity is rooted. Tell me, when you say that it’s hard for the media to be authentic, what do you mean by that? A lot of people tend to complain, “How can you be authentic? You’re getting paid by all these brands.”

“We know this one person very very well, we know what they like, how they like it, and so on. We then educate our brand partner as to how they should be behaving in order to speak to that consumer.” – David Fischer

I’m not necessarily saying that we need to be authentic, but that everybody keeps saying this. 

I know it’s a difficult word, but I think even there, we try to know our audience and our community the best we can. The only thing we say is that we know this one person very very well, we know what they like, how they like it, and so on. We then educate our brand partner as to how they should be behaving in order to speak to that consumer. That’s how we’re trying to drive change as well. There’s only so much impact that we can have. Sometimes brands come to us and it’s already been baked, “Here’s the cookie and we just need you to write about the cookie.” More than ever, we’re saying, “You need us to create the dough for you to get it right, because your cookie isn’t the right cookie.” That’s exciting to me. Because we’re moving up in the ladder within those brands, and we’re no longer just a media brand that comes at the end – because that’s usually how it goes, right? Media comes at the end of it all. “Here’s the campaign, here are the pictures.” We’re now coming and saying, “If you want to be authentic for that audience, you have to do it this way.”

I like that. For me authenticity is values-driven – we make sure that everything we do sits within our values. The values are ours and not our readers’; I would prefer to stick to my own values than bend them to please our audience.

I would say that it’s the same for us. Obviously, we have values as a business; there’s people working within that business and we try to defend those values as best as we can. And when we feel like a partner is the wrong partner because they’ve done, said, or sold certain things, then we will speak about that with a partner. If there’s a clash of values, it’s clear you can’t work together. Which is of course always tough within a certain commercial reality. But I can definitely say that we do that. The same way that there are conversations to be had within our editorial team, that we cannot write about a person anymore because of such and such things. Just because it’s not something we can stand for, or a person that we can give a platform to. You know how it is – you’re a business and maybe that person drives incredible reach for your business, and still you’re saying, “yeah, but that doesn’t matter.” Nobody gets it right always. I think it’s about constant readjustment and looking in the mirror. It’s sometimes saying, “Okay, we fucked up here.”

“I want the right people to notice us. I’ve never really been that interested in being big or mainstream.” – David Fischer

What are your goals in the next 3-5 years? What areas are you wanting to impact? 

I think the main thing, which has always been the same, is that I want the right people to notice us. I’ve never really been that interested in being big or mainstream. That was never the goal. It was always about the right person understanding what we’re doing and appreciating that. Them being open to working with us and collaborating with us and doing exciting things. What I really love about what we do now is that there’s this idea of coming at it from all sides, trying to figure out how we can make it the most powerful. For example, today we have a digital cover with Kai-Isaiah Jamal; they’re dressed in Wales Bonner, and at the same time the new Wales Bonner collection arrives in our commerce environment. And in the future we can maybe have a Wales Bonner installation in the shop, or have a talk with diverse talent. I feel like that can have an impact, it can be powerful. It’s not just about e-commerce, it’s not just about sales. It’s multi-layered, it’s meaningful. It’s a platform that gives important talent a voice. I really want to explore how we can do that at the very best level. Still today, I dare say there’s no person in the company that spends more time on our channels than I do. I check our website, without any form of exaggeration, twenty times a day. Not because I’m controlling, but because I care and I’m interested.

“Nobody will ever be able to deny good work. Good meaningful work that matters. That means constant drilling in and readjustment.” – David Fischer

I’m surprised you’re still reading all of the posts. 

Everybody fights for attention, because people only have so much time at the end of the day. They spend a bit of time on Netflix, a bit on their Playstation, a bit on a fashion show. Hopefully a bit of time on 1 Granary and Highsnobiety. We’re all fighting for a few minutes more of their time. That’s why I tell my team, “Just forget thinking about what could work and what could reach this or that; just do good work.” Nobody will ever be able to deny good work. Good meaningful work that matters. That means constant drilling in and readjustment. In the case of us, you have to get 250 people on the same page. 250 people that understand what you’re trying to do, and where you’re trying to get. I think that’s a big challenge: communication, communication, communication. You can almost never do enough of that in many ways.

I can’t imagine how you align 250 people on media. 

And in the grand scheme, we are a small business. Then there’s Apple with 190.000 people. Again, what I find truly exciting is coming at it from all these different avenues, but bringing them together in a meaningful way. It’s not just about shopping. It’s everything but in a meaningful way. Truthfully being able to claim that we have influence. And obviously, ideally a positive influence on the audience that we reach.