Ina Lekiewicz,
Unpolished

Who are Unpolished and what do you do?

It’s a magazine, but not a typical magazine. I used to work for commercial magazines and we’d work with so many amazing, creative people, but would be blocking their creativity. I wanted to have a platform to let all these creatives do whatever they want to do. In magazines, everyone follows a pattern and all creativity gets killed. So, at Unpolished, we try not to brief too much or overly-edit the content, and just be really open to ideas. We often ask photographers if there’s any kind of project they really want to work on for a magazine, and then we give them a platform. 

At VIDA, we define Next Generation Media Brands as having one or more of the following characteristics: Being disruptive, having diverse revenue streams, operating across multiple platforms and meeting the needs of an underserved audience/community. How does Unpolished fit our definition of what it means to be a Next-Generation Media Brand? 

Our magazine comes out twice a year, but even during the day-to-day, we try to have connections with our readers. We usually send out 100 copies to friends of the magazine or social media influencers. It’s almost like a coffee table book – it’s so beautiful, and we know that people tend to keep it or share it instead of throwing it away, which is important to us. We also have content on our website, we use Instagram a lot and we’re also trying to produce more video. You can shop on the website too, which is great, so we’re very multi-platform.

What’s your ‘why’?

When we first started, all the casting in commercial marketing was pretty boring. We felt it was really important to have a magazine that was based on diversity. From my experience of working in magazines and seeing the level of retouching, we also wanted to create something more responsible. 

When I was working in commercial magazines, everything was heavily retouched – so much hair, so much makeup. People would say ‘oh yeah, magazines, everyone knows it’s just a dream’, but then social media came along and the dream started to become more attainable for younger girls. Anyone can use apps and filters and make themselves similar to magazines, which becomes more and more harmful. With social media, people can see everyone looking so fake and airbrushed, so I felt like it was important to have something more true to life. 

We try to have natural hair, natural makeup, minimal retouches. We want to show a different kind of beauty, like back in the 90s. 

My ‘why’ is changing slightly now as the commercial magazine market is changing, but Unpolished isn’t just about being a magazine - It’s about changing the way we look at beauty. 

How did you build your brand?

For the first issue we had a Kickstarter. It was more of a personal passion at this stage, but when I started the Kickstarter, I was shocked at how many people shared it on social media. It had amazing exposure. Sometimes I think things like Kickstarter can look a bit unprofessional, but for us, it gave us a lot of publicity because people shared it so much. We were so lucky because it was organic – we didn’t have to do much at all! People shared it a lot on social media and then we also sent the magazine to people with beautiful feeds who would share it for composition shots. Still, I was surprised how well it did. 

I created the first issue with a friend and we decided that it would be a one-off personal project for our own portfolios. We were thinking maybe 1 or 2 issues, but it became so successful that we had to continue. It wasn’t really planned to be that successful! 

How did you develop your audience?

We realized we had a real audience by issue 3. It sold out so quickly and we had distributors asking for more copies of the next issue, so we knew the audience was there. Social media has been another way, but also through our contributors. We choose our contributors carefully and they cross-share the content. 

How did you increase your revenue?

We used Kickstarter for the first issue, and now we have shoppable links, etc. We work a lot with brands to create editorials, so we don’t do funding from typical advertising. Everything comes from a very personal approach. We work with brands to create the content together and it’s been very successful. It’s always a collaboration. 

Because things started very organically, we’ve never chased revenue. We’ve always had brands come to us and never had anyone working on the commercial or revenue side. It’s only very recently that we’ve started thinking commercially because there’s a need for it now. 

What’s next?

We definitely want to develop the website and have more video content – everyone wants that at the moment. I also want to build the commercial side. It would be great to have more events to be even closer to our audience.