“International mainstream titles used to be hot sellers for us in the ’90s and early ’00s, but that’s no longer the case. As you know, we stock a lot of indie publications – titles like Buffalo Zine (the cult satirical fashion magazine with Hans Ulrich Obrist as arts editor-at-large), System or Perfect Magazine (Katie Grand’s pandemic-birthed brainchild that defies traditional fashion magazine formats in look and operation model – it’s a content agency first). These tend to go for $60, $70, $80, but they can and do sell better than the major, more conventional titles depending on the issue. My team and I have asked ourselves why. We don’t know for sure, but it’s likely to do with how most things have gone online or that customers find mainstream titles boring now.”

“Customers today want something different and unique to what they can see on social media or the Internet. Take Vestoj (an independent academic journal on fashion) – I think that Basheer is its only stockist in Singapore and (despite its obscurity), it does pretty well. It offers a very nuanced and – more importantly – critical approach to fashion, which is very rare and hardly seen in other fashion publications, even the indie ones.”

“I think now people are more inclined to follow a particular editor than a publication so much so that he or she – rather than the magazine itself – becomes iconic. Once he or she leaves, sales of the title tend to dip unless a good replacement is found. The value of a magazine having an established name is no longer enough to attract people like it used to. Even the biggest, most influential titles need to come up with a gimmick to draw attention – from illustrated covers to coming up with a staggering number of covers – Perfect Magazine, for example, had hundreds of covers for issue number one.”

“It’s almost always the case that a magazine fronted by a celebrity sells better than one that doesn’t. Lately, magazines featuring BTS and Harry Styles have been doing very well. Normally we might sell, say, five to 10 copies of the publication, but the issues with them have sold six to seven times better.”

“The 2004 Martin Margiela edition of A Magazine Curated By had a reprint last year and that sold so quickly while the following edition created in collaboration with Grace Wales Bonner didn’t sell very well to be honest. Recently, there was also the issue of System that devoted a considerable number of pages to Balenciaga and its creative director Demna that did very well. The bottom line to me though: If a product is good, people will keep coming back to it.”

“They’re the most influential factor in determining trends and what sells. We always need to listen to them because I’m just one person and may not always know certain things that are going on in fashion. I may not pick up on certain titles that our customers who are everywhere have noticed and are interested in. Take the magazine 032c (the cult biannual that covers fashion, art and politics and has become such a creative force that it’s got its own apparel brand) – my customers used to keep telling me that it’s very good, but I didn’t really understand that. In our earlier years, mainstream fashion magazines were guaranteed hot sellers, but while their sales have dwindled, small niche titles like 032c have maintained their sales and popularity. This has taught me to value my customers’ opinions more.”

“Basheer used to be something like a supermarket – we operated in a very straightforward way. With print’s falling sales though, we need to be more specialised and customised. If a customer asks for an obscure title that we don’t stock, I won’t mind bringing it in even if we end up selling only two or three copies. It helps us to build a relationship with the customer and they’ll keep coming back because they know we’re willing to bring special issues or titles in for them. On a more personal level, I do so also because I’m curious about my customers’ tastes: Why are they reading this magazine? What makes it so special? I want to know.”

Photography Phyllicia Wang

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity and first appeared in the April 2022 Humans Of Fashion edition of FEMALE