Meet Lucy Cleland, Country & Town House

After cutting her media teeth at Condé Nast's fledgling contract publishing department, Lucy Cleland syphoned her editorial and business wisdom into launching a suite of glossy magazines serving some of London's most prestigious postcodes. With an aptitude for luxury publishing, 15 years ago, Cleland and her now-husband founded Country & Town House, then a magazine to enamour high-earning readers, who worked hard in the City during the week, to enjoy the spoils that the country offered at the weekend. Funded primarily by top-end property advertising, the business model would be rocked six months later by the global financial crisis. Cleland adroitly weathered the storm by transforming the publication into a more rounded luxury title. That ability to reinvent has served the magazine well, now as a 360°-digital brand with a focus on sustainability, that resolutely keeps print at its core.

I started my career at the just-launched contract publishing department at Condé Nast, which felt like a wild start up within this glossy edifice of Vogue and Tatler. There were just four of us and we were definitely the underlings but it proved fantastic on-the-job experience. Because the department was so small, I learnt both the business and editorial side of magazines, moving up very fast to become deputy editor of contracts with the Savoy Group, Canary Wharf, Tate and HSBC.

Had I been at one of the bigger magazines, I would have been making tea for three years, I suspect. That luxury, glossy environment remained with me and I used my Condé Nast experience at a smaller publishing business where I launched a set of local, high-end magazines, delivered through the letterboxes of Notting Hill, Chiswick and the like. When the business was sold three years later, my now-husband and I sat down with a piece of paper to work out what to do next. Country & Town House was the result.

When we first planned Country & Town House in 2007, the luxury space was driven by big City bonuses and property. We had amazing relationships with estate agents like Savills and Knight Frank and we saw a boom in country property being bought by City types with massive bonuses, wanting to spread their portfolio and spend more time in the country. Our initial idea was to present the concept of Country Life for the younger generation; those who wanted to meld both lifestyles seamlessly. It wasn't necessarily about owning property in both but it was a mentality of work hard and spending your leisure time out in the country and exploring beautiful pubs and hotels and enjoying time outdoors. When the agents backed the idea, we knew that we had a product.

The 2008 crash came and we found ourselves looking at the edge of a precipice. We'd been going great guns for around six months but the crash knocked the stuffing out of the country property market. We diversified and spread our target advertising far more deeply into the lifestyle section. Interiors, watches and jewellery became the main three areas and it has grown to more lifestyle areas since then. Diving into these lovely subjects made the product far more interesting and a privilege to work on too.

Our readers are smart, curious and they engage with our content pillars. Where Vogue and House & Garden may satisfy a subject, Country & Town House satisfies an audience - delivering them a strong edit of everything they want to enjoy in life as well as interesting and powerful interview subjects and features. We want moreover to stand for British luxury and sustainability because the luxury industry has a lot of power, as do many of our readers and we feel we can put the two together and inspire them to make changes that are akin to more sustainable and regenerative as the way we shop, invest, travel and eat needs examining so we aren't always taking and depleting but giving and restoring too.

We interview interesting people making an impact - a climate lawyer as much as a Hollywood actress all while keeping the magazine looking gorgeous. We're all so bashed by the drip feed of horrific news every day that hectoring people into behavioural change isn't the answer, or not at least where I see Country & Town House playing a role. People are feeling powerless because they can't solve the Ukraine war, climate breakdown or the cost of living crisis. But we can do other little things that boost moods, inspire a more thoughtful approach to living and even introduce names who are making a difference to the above issues, then I think that is a valid approach.

With a title like Country & Town House it might surprise people to find an interview with the open source investigator Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat (who worked out who poisoned the Skripals and what happened to the Malaysian airlines flight that crashed in Ukraine), or environmental lawyer and founder of ClientEarth James Thornton, who is one of my absolute heroes, alongside stars like Freida Pinto or Jenna Coleman. Conversations at Scarfes Bar - my favourite bar (at London's Rosewood hotel) is a regular interview slot; Anya Hindmarch, Grace Beverley and Jeremy Hunt among recent interviewees.

Commercial partnerships are our bread and butter. We offer so much more than words on the page and we look for partners, whose values align with ours, to share and own the space within our eight content pillars across all touchpoints: podcasts, newsletters, events, breakfasts, print and so on. 

Our recent six-month campaign with Swiss Tourism knocked it out of the park by delivering on their KPIs and on a brief that included print, online, advertorials, newsletters, social media ­- strong content that resonated with our readers. Our most recent audience survey showed a 60 per cent female readership, in the 25-55 age bracket. While still London-centric, the US is our second biggest market online.

Ours is a cultured, wealthy audience and we bring in the editorial talent to fulfil what's needed for our commercial clients. For Swiss Tourism, we had a brilliant journalist who knows Switzerland like the back of her hand. When we worked with Coutts bank, we used the services of a skilled finance writer.

Our supplements are stars in our firmament. We produce nine printed publications including a huge annual bible on British luxury brands, and supplements on interiors, British hotels, watches and jewellery, and the biggest independent schools' magazine called School House. They are all high quality, have a long shelf-life and offer huge sponsorship opportunities.

I was 30 when I started Town & Country, I'm 47 now. I've totally grown up with the brand but as a founder business, you can afford to change the rules and constantly reinvent. Being a founder-led business means commercial partners get to speak to me, not an account manager. We try to always go above and beyond. We are multimedia but print remains a breath of fresh air in which to inspire people. Long live print!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-cleland/