Jeeves, bring me my copy of LUXE

The Denver Business Journal - November 25, 2005 by Amy Bryer

For those of us who own a seven-bedroom, nine-bath, 14,000-square-foot mansion in Telluride—or just dream about it—a Florida publisher has launched a new magazine, LUXE, that features exceptional Colorado homes.

The name says it all. This high-gloss, oversized architecture and design magazine profiles one opulent Colorado home after another—most worth $5 million or more.

"A lot of architectural magazines feature homes that are interesting, but not especially compelling," said Dana Meacham, LUXE group publisher. "We wanted to set the bar extremely high and scouted the state from one end to the other looking for homes that took our breath away. If they gave us goose bumps, we thought the readers might like them too."

LUXE was created by Sandow Media Corp., owned by Adam Sandow and based in Boca Raton, FL. Sandow launched his first national magazine, called Honeymoon, at age 25, and later helped found an Internet startup, The Knot, which is now a $35 million-per-year media company.

Sandow has sunk more than $1 million into creating LUXE and hopes to expand the concept to 15-20 other markets, such as Texas. Sandow plans to launch three more markets by the second quarter of 2006.

LUXE has had two issues in Colorado and will publish quarterly. The next edition comes out in January. It's distributed to about 20,000 affluent Colorado households, with home values worth $1 million or more. Another 10,000 copies are sold for $6.95 at newsstands, such as in the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver and at airports in feeder markets such as Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.

They are selling LUXE to people who own their second or third home in Colorado, Meacham said. One home featured a 7,000-square-foot vintage car showroom complete with authentic Texaco station and gas pumps. Another included a master bathtub created from marble dust by Italian manufacturere Agape on top of a hand-carved Honduran mahogany stand overlooking Pikes Peak.

While searching for homes that fit the magazine's criteria, the LUXE staff created a term called "luxey," in in "Is this home 'luxey' enough for our readers?" Meacham said.

"It's not meant to be snobby," she said. "But some of these homes are already on unbelievable sites with the natrual beauty of Colorado, and that architecture and design has to be very strong to compete with that beauty."

The lush decor of the estates is sandwiched between full-page ads for mostly Colorado businesses often selling design and construction services or luxury itmes such as $30,000 bathtubs. No ad is less than a full page, and they're solf for just under $3,000 a page with an annual contract, which includes four issues, Sandow said.

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