Monocle Magazine’s Got Pretension in Spades and Debt to Its Parent
Monocle is a luxury lifestyle and current affairs magazine aimed at a globetrotting elite: recent stories have ranged from lists of the 10 most liveable cities (eight are in Europe) to suggestions on solving the housing crisis (one answer: build beautiful) to an analysis piece on Israeli strikes on Iran that begins with an allusion to the geopolitics of 653 BCE.
It’s buzzy: but it’s unclear whether it’s on stable footing.
The Monocle business spans six incorporations across multiple countries, including a parent company in Switzerland. In 2023, the business’ biggest incorporation by headcount, UK-registered Winkontent Limited, generated revenue of £19.2 million ($26 million), the most recent year for which filings are available, and an operating loss before tax and interest of £1.1 million ($1.5 million)—its sixth such loss since 2014. The highest operating profit margin the company recorded in the decade was 3.4%.
Over the past decade, Monocle’s UK incorporation cumulatively recorded an operating loss of £5.5 million ($7.4 million) and operating cash outflow of £4.7 million ($6.3 million). The business does typically report a large gross profit—in 2023 it stood at £8.4 million and in 2022 £9.5 million—but these are consistently wiped out by high administrative expenses—£9.4 million in 2023 and £9.1 million in 2022.
It’s not uncommon for businesses to show a paper loss because of “administrative costs” that are, in fact, just management fees being paid upward to a parent company. But a Monocle spokesperson in France didn’t respond when asked whether this was true in their case.
Since Winkontent Ltd’s 2018 accounts, each filing has expressed “material uncertainty” over Winkontent’s ability to continue as a going concern—ie, to keep operating.
The spokesperson insisted that the UK’s business registry “certainly doesn’t give the full picture.” Indeed, there are the other five incorporations to consider. This person, however, declined to provide the full picture and what is left is a story told by documents.
Each of Winkontent’s filings since 2018 have emphasised that its parent company and investors have pledged to fund its continued operations, and Monocle’s spokesperson told AMO the Swiss entity “funds the UK entity.”
As a result, the company owes substantial sums to Swiss-registered Winkontent AG: at the end of 2023, total loans and interest to its sister and parent companies stood at £10.2 million ($13.8 million), up from £7.7 million ($10.4 million) the year before. Excepting this debt, the company narrowly holds more assets than it owes.
In its 2023 accounts, management said that they had undertaken a strategic review of the broader international group “and developed a 5-year growth plan which secures steady profitability,” with investors agreeing the parent company would increase its equity capital by a further 7 million Swiss francs (£6.3 million, $8.6 million). A note in the accounts, which were published in December 2024, said the resulting “digital re-build,” audience growth campaign and sales hires had produced higher advertising revenues in 2024.
Monocle is “currently in expansion and investment mode,” the Monocle spokesperson said.
Pretension and Parody
Monocle was founded by Tyler Brûlé, a Canadian who is perhaps best known for launching design magazine Wallpaper. He told Flashes and Flames in 2022 that the brand’s other investors are a small number of family offices in Europe, the U.S. and Asia. He retains majority ownership after selling a minority stake to Nikkei in 2014.
Monocle is best known for its flagship magazine, and it has leveraged that brand to launch travel guides, cafes and shops, an online store, an annual “Quality of Life” conference and a digital radio station. Of Winkontent Limited’s 114 staff in 2023, 28 worked for the magazine directly while 21 worked at Monocle Radio. (The company claims 63% of its readers listen to Monocle Radio every week, and that the station attracts 1 million listeners per month.)
The company lists headquarters in London, Paris and Zurich, as well as shops and bureaus in Toronto, Frankfurt, Merano (Italy), Tokyo and Hong Kong. Earlier this year, Brûlé opened a café/bookstore in Paris’s second arrondissement, and a fawning Le Monde article proclaimed Brûlé “embodies a blend of globalized and timeless trends.”
The profile added that the magazine was “at the peak of its hype.” Brûlé told Le Monde: “I like talking about myself.” The whole enterprise makes for easy parodying.
But people—very rich ones—do appear to be reading Monocle.
According to a media kit provided by the Monocle spokesperson, the magazine has a circulation of 80,000 while its audience has an average household income of €400,000 ($464,000), rising to €480,000 ($558,000) in North America and €485,000 ($563,000) in Asia. The median reader’s age is 42, just over a quarter of the audience reputedly holds C-suite positions and 70% are men.
Among the 24,000 subscribers Monocle claims in its media kit, their average income is reported to be €556,691 ($646,000), with 50% holding “vice-president, owner, president, chairman or CEO roles.” 87% are men. The company launched a £1,500-per-year “Monocle Patron Circle” in 2023, which it says has 40 members.
In the last figures Monocle publicly reported to the UK’s Audit Bureau of Circulation in 2019, 37% of its circulation was actively bought on the newsstand while another 28% were sent straight to subscribers. Emphasising the brand’s focus on the jet set, the remaining circulation comprised “paid multiple copies” paid for by airport lounges, train stations and hotels as complementary perks for their guests. It claims to run a growing newsletter, with 92,000 subscribers and a 47% open rate.
Digital Abstinence
The UK-incorporated Winkontent seems to be the operational core of the group: it employs more than half the 200 people owner-editor Brûlé told Le Monde he employs across Monocle and his advertising and consulting agency, Winkreative, and the UK company is identified as the operating entity on monocle.com. It also accounts for 58 of the 75 editorial staff Monocle’s spokesperson told AMO the company employs.
Winkontent already had net liabilities of £6.4 million in 2019, but given its focus on travel and its expansion into brick and mortar stores, the business was hit hard by the pandemic: the UK company’s revenue fell from £17.3 million in 2019 to £14.9 million in 2020 and it saw an operating loss of £129,000.
Monocle’s spokesperson told AMO: “Our revenues have grown every year except for the dip in 2020.” That differs slightly from the picture portrayed by the UK accounts, which show a general trend of revenue growth but occasional year-on-year dips.
The pandemic setback prompted an improvement in Monocle’s digital operations: in 2020 it launched its digital-only subscription, total subscriptions grew 12% year-on-year and its annual report for the year noted that its e-commerce business “experienced a strong increase” in revenues. (Sales of goods accounted for approximately a quarter of Winkontent Limited’s revenue in its 2023 accounts.)
Brûlé is still disdainful of digital, telling Le Monde: “Too many media outlets have become production factories for social media. They end up feeding their competitors and losing the relationship with their readers.” He suggested instead digital abstinence and socializing with a drink.
Over the pandemic, the UK business also cut its headcount and shrank its print runs, and over the subsequent two years it recorded operating profit of £463,319 and £234,644—its first profitable years since 2016—as well as record revenue of £19.9 million in 2022. But the company lapsed back into loss in 2023, citing both inflationary pressures and a 3.7% decline in revenues driven by a drop in advertising and sponsorship.
The 2023 cash infusion from the Swiss parent company, executives said, would be used to grow both Monocle’s paid and free audience, update its digital product, add new physical locations, expand its undersized sales team and create “a new online platform to grow e-commerce sales.” (That Paris location, pictured above, opened in February of this year.)
Audience growth was laid out as a key part of this formula: the directors wrote that “the current level of editorial output can be diffused to a larger audience at little extra cost but higher revenues. A larger audience will also drive higher advertising revenues.”
