‘It’s been a rollercoaster!’ Harry Jarman, founder of men’s lifestyle magazine The Gentleman’s Journal, on how he’s spent the last decade.
‘As much as it’s 10 years old, I feel like we’re still very much at the embryo stage because each year, it just gets bigger. It’s been a lot of fun’. Harry created The Gentleman’s Journal, a luxury magazine covering fashion, food, travel and more, almost by accident. He was running a men’s swimwear brand - ‘a very quick, short failure’ – and finding it difficult to get press. ‘For a startup, it was pretty much impossible unless you signed a cheque for £25,000 minimum’. So the only answer was to create an advertising platform himself.
A digital blog swiftly expanded and caught fire. ‘It was at that time when social media was - they weren’t monetising it, they were still just growing the audience. Instagram was trying to work out what it was. And so we just grew and grew.’ A print magazine followed, bucking the trend and launching at a time when other publications were folding and going online.
Luxury is different, Harry tells me, but is not without its shortcomings. ‘I think that ultimately we’re in a really competitive space. It’s not what you would call a growing market, like gaming or tech - you do have to work twice as hard to stand out.’ It’s clear he’s done just that and now runs G Studio alongside the magazine, an agency and production house creating campaigns across print, digital and film. It seems that brands, such as Tod’s and Breitling, loved The Gentleman’s Journal shoots so much, they wanted more. No higher compliment, surely.
Harry found the grassroots nature of building a company from scratch extremely rewarding -
‘I’ve always been quite entrepreneurial and at school I had various schemes that I was doing. I love that side of it’.
He went straight from A-Levels to four years working on Philip Green’s super-yacht, saving enough money to start his own business, whilst others were just finishing university; Harry’s hustle has got him far.
Now no longer sitting in his bedroom with his laptop but managing a full-time team of 18, however, I’m interested to know whether he maintains the passion and excitement levels? ‘The last four years have been so uncertain, but you can’t sit there and wait around until everything’s really shiny, I guess you’ve just got to try and manage your cost-base. And we have grown reasonably organically and want to carry on doing that. We’re not trying to take lots of venture money on. It’s slower growth, but I think you get to know your business a lot better’.
Now we’ve got all the grown-up business chat over, I ask him what I’ve wanted to know all along: how he handles the pressure of his own wardrobe choices, when he’s the founder of such a stylish brand. Does he ever regret going off-piste, or does fortune favour the bold?
‘The idea behind The Gentleman’s Journal was that other men’s magazines at the time were just doing this catwalk fashion that wasn’t relevant to any of my friends. Who buys this stuff?! So if you look at our fashion pages they’re all super, super cool, but classical. Some of that is expensive and some of that is not. Why does it have to be these top, top luxury brands? We’re always trying to look out for affordable luxury. I think that’s a really important part of what we do.’ He’s avoided the question. And what about you, Harry?
‘I wear the same thing all the time. A white shirt, navy blazer, dark jeans and some smart trainers.’
So a uniform? ‘Yes, the way to get around that is to have a uniform’. He laughs. ‘It’s better to be cautious. I’ve got 5 pairs of the same shoes.’
October, 2023
