Refinery29, the fast-growing media company focused on women, has today announced its expansion into Germany.
Refinery29.de will be the first non-English property owned by Refinery29, and the second-local edition following the launch of Refinery29 in the UK.
Refinery29 launched back in 2005 with a hard focus on hyper-local fashion news. Since, it has built out numerous verticals to become a complete lifestyle blog for women all over the country, putting it in a top position in the Style, Fashion and Beauty across the web.
In November of 2015, Refinery29 launched its UK office, and has now grown that property to 16 staffers across editorial, marketing, partnerships, branded content, and influencer/talent.
The company hopes to establish the same growth rate in Berlin. Thus far, the company has put a leadership team together, including Kate Ward, Vice President of International, from Refinery29’s European headquarters in London. Cloudy Zakrocki (former Executive Editor online at Interview Magazine Germany) will join as Editorial Director, Nora Beckershaus (former Managing Editor at Axel Springer’s Celepedia) joins as Director of Marketing and Operations, and Katja Schweitzberger (former editor at leading fashion blog Les Mads) will join the company as Fashion Editor.
Refinery29.de will create its own native content, as well as integrating original content from Refinery29.com and Refinery29.uk.
Here’s what German-born CEO and cofounder Philippe von Borries had to say about it:
Expanding Refinery29 to Germany is an exciting and meaningful opportunity both from a personal and professional level, as Germany is not only my birthplace, but the fourth largest media market in the world with a legacy of outstanding journalism. We look forward to establishing Refinery29 as a fresh new voice that can serve our powerful female audience, in addition to creating strong content out of Berlin that will add to Refinery29’s global network.
Refinery29 has raised just over $80 million since launch, according to CrunchBase.
You can check out Refinery29.de right here.