Business

On tap: Jason Binn’s media venture Du Jour

Jason Binn, who seemed to have impeccable timing when he sold luxury-magazine company Niche Media in 2006, two years before the financial crisis, is returning to the luxury market with the launch of Du Jour Media. The effort will pair a quarterly magazine and a digital publication.

The goal is to launch a new media venture that captures the glamour of print while tapping into the immediacy of the digital world.

Binn has attracted as a principal backer for Du Jour none other than James Cohen, who sold the Hudson News transportation-hub newsstand business to Switzerland-based duty-free chain operator Dufry.

He has also enlisted Kevin Ryan of the Gilt Groupe as a non-financial partner.

“He’s a strategic partner, not a financial partner,” said Binn, about the relationship with Ryan. “It gives us access to highly engaged consumers, and it gives a physical dimension to Gilt with a great complement to what they do in high fashion and lifestyle.”

The board of directors for the privately held Binn Group, the parent company, includes Binn, Cohen and Ryan, the former CEO of DoubleClick and co-founder of The Business Insider with Henry Blodget.

Du Jour Media will go up against some well-established rivals, including Condé Nast’s Style.com, a fashion website that is launching a twice-a-year magazine, and American Express Publishing, which has Departures magazine for its high-end Platinum Card holders.

Departures Publisher Steven DeLuca didn’t mince words about his new competitor. “Du Jour is targeting an unqualified audience of affluent individuals who are bargain hunters. While no one likes to overpay, Departures’ qualified audience of Platinum Cardmembers is in search of and willing to pay full price for exceptional goods, services and experiences that deliver on that promise.”

Binn, who founded Ocean Drive in 1992 and launched Niche Media in 1998 before selling to Greenspun Media in 2006, claims that Gilt’s database gives it tremendous insight into upscale consumers’ buying habits.

However, as Gilt’s decision to lay off nearly 10 percent of its 1,000 employees earlier this year demonstrated, the environment is getting more competitive.

Du Jour will produce four quarterly print magazines aimed at 235,000 homes in key cities including New York, Los Angeles and Miami, as well as hot vacation spots like the Hamptons and Aspen. In the months when the magazine is not published, Du Jour will send 3 million digital editions to Gilt customers.

Binn said that the target reader of Du Jour will have a minimum household income of $250,000 as well as a median home value of more than $1.5 million.

Right now, Binn has offices on Park Avenue and says he plans to hire 25 people in the next 60 days and launch in fall 2012.

“Print is not dead, but it is not the driving force for today’s consumers,” said Binn. “I’m not quite sure anything is the driving force.”

Manly job

Men’s Journal, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this June, has a new publisher on board to help sell some ads against the milestone edition.

Chris McLoughlin, who was most recently associate publisher at Redbook and earlier served as publisher of Condé Nast’s now-defunct Golf for Women, replaces Michael Wolfe, who decamped for Dennis Publishing’s The Week.

Jann Wenner founded the magazine in part because he always regretted selling off Outside mag in its early and struggling days. Outside later went on to fame and fortune under Larry Burke.

Pass the app

One of the big attractions of digital apps is their portability. When Condé Nast’s Bon Appetit launched its first app last week, it was aiming for a whole new twist on the app experience.

“We want the Bon Appetit app to be the next great kitchen utensil,” said Bon Appetit Editor-In-Chief Adam Rapoport. “It’s an app that you can use, not just read.”

He said one of the big drawbacks for editors of food magazines is that they are very recipe-intensive. “They take up a lot of space, and you can’t edit out any of the ingredients.”

Apps get around that by allowing pop-ups, videos and pictures.

“You’re using it more as a cooking tool than with the magazine,” he said. “Instead of one photo on a page, you can have five.”

And he’s hoping it becomes a permanent fixture that could one day help replace the shelf of bulky cookbooks in kitchens.

The app is available for $19.99 a year, $1.99 for the latest month or free with a subscription to the monthly magazine, where a promotional code allows access to the digital version. Right now it is available for the Apple iPad, the Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook.

On its launch day, Feb. 22, it briefly cracked the iTunes chart as one of the 25 top-grossing apps, at No. 17, right behind Martha Stewart Living and just ahead of No. 18 Vanity Fair.

kkelly@nypost.com