Exploring Creativity and Community with Sophie: A Conversation on Luna Collective

Hey, how’s it going? Thanks for having me.

Yeah, of course. Hi everyone, my name is Sophie. I’m the founder and editor-in-chief of the Luna Collective. We’re an online and print magazine and creative platform. So we’re creating a lot of things on their side. We have our print editorial magazine and some other print projects that we make. A bunch of online content, we throw events and then we have our store, of course, where we have our print projects and then general merchandise, clothing, apparel, all that jazz.

Yeah, yeah, so we kind of are in the intersection between music and visual arts. So we create a biannual editorial print magazine where we’re interviewing artists, featuring different visual artists. That’s kind of our main product is the print magazine. We also do other sorts of print projects, different seasonal things, and coffee table books we’ve created. We work a lot with photographers for those. And then we have some more branded merchandise, clothing, hats, all that kind of all the basics, I guess.

I’ve always wanted to connect with artists on a better level. I’ve always thought of myself as a bit of a curator in the music world but didn’t want to go the label route. I started Luna when I was in college and from the beginning knew I wanted it to be more than just a magazine. I always envisioned it being kind of a multifaceted empire in a way, so very quickly we expanded to different online content, events, and then the store of course. I see it as just an outlet for all my different creative endeavors. And I have a staff too, it’s not just me, I have a team of over a hundred. So it’s an outlet for all of us to execute any creative ideas that come to mind. So it could be as simple as I have a design I like, so I’m going to slap it on a sweatshirt and there it exists in a store or someone on the team has a visual idea and we can bring it to life through a different type of project.

I’d say we’re Gen Zennial is probably the main group, because I feel like that’s become a little bit harder to define now. Early mid-20s, people that are interested in the arts, whether they are creators themselves, or they’re just someone that appreciates it. Because we’re at that intersection of both music and visual arts, I find our audience to be passionate about the arts in general, but not pigeonholed into one thing. You know, we’re not just appealing to people who listen to a certain genre of music. We’re not just appealing to film photographers. We’re appealing to kind of a whole cultural group, essentially.

That’s a good question. I think what makes us different and why I think that there’s room for everyone in kind of the magazine or creative space that we’re in. I think what we bring to the tables we work with our audience a lot, which is a cool opportunity. We have a lot of submission-based opportunities or through our events or online content or even the print side of things, we can constantly create with our audience and collaborators, which I think is cool. We have our staff. So I’m working with our writers and our graphic designers for projects, but we’re often opening things up to working with people who follow us. And through that, we can create limited merch lines or specific print projects with these people. And I feel like it allows our audience to just connect with us on a different level, knowing that there’s not a barrier between us and the audience.

Probably changed the past year. We’ve seen a push towards more digital products. So we have our print magazines, but we also sell digital copies of all of that. And I would say the past year, I’ve seen a lot more sales for our digital versions of our magazines, which is interesting. We used to only offer a print version, and then the digital version was only accessible. If you bought a print copy, you would get an automatic digital download. About two, or three years ago, we started selling the digital version just as its own separately. And that’s kind of slowly crept up as becoming our best-selling products as the digital copies of our print magazines.

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think since we’re in this digital age where everything’s accessible, it can be hard to break through that and reach out to people and resonate with an audience who isn’t familiar with your product. I think we have a great relationship with our current audience, but it’s another thing to expand. And a trillion things are being fed to a user every single day you log on to Instagram and they’re spending maybe two seconds on an Instagram post and I think with something like TikTok shop and Instagram shopping, you’re just being bombarded with the ability to purchase things. So I think just breaking through, I don’t even want to call it noise, but yeah, all the other things that someone has fed kind of making yourself stand out. And yeah, like you kind of asked earlier, what makes you different? Why would someone want to support and buy from your store overnight?

Yeah, exactly. And that’s the thing, I think, I still feel like there’s room for everyone in this type of industry. But if someone has a limited, limited funds, and they’re only going to spend it at XYZ, how are you going to become that XYZ?

Right now we do a lot, we’re starting to do a lot more partnerships with other brands, which has been fun. We still do like kind of the traditional digital advertising route. Mainly we’re advertising on Instagram, starting to get a little bit more on TikTok. But I found what makes for a more meaningful kind of promotion is partnerships. So we work sometimes with different film photography brands and do partnerships with them and then just different creators and collaborators.

Kind of the easiest way for us to get in front of a new audience is by working with an individual and their group. It’s almost like treating them like influencers in a way. I’d say instead of doing influencer marketing, we’re just working with creators with a large following.

Just in-house, my kind of day, I just do this on the side. This is like my side hustle, but it’s been for six years. We’re celebrating this year. My day job and all my experience has been in marketing. I work in marketing full-time and I used to have an agency background. So it’s been cool to apply what I’ve had to learn kind of in the nine-to-five setting where maybe I’ve had a little less creativity through Luna where I get to have a lot more fun with it.

Yeah, I mean, I think what’s cool, is it feels equally exciting as overwhelming sometimes where the sky’s the limit. I feel like we’re able to do anything we want to, which is so cool. Like just kind of the upcoming month, it looks like we’re having our 22nd print issue out. We’re doing two South by Southwest events. We have a show in LA tomorrow. We have another event in New York next month. And we’re working on another set of sweatshirts and just some more apparel lines. So we’re able to do everything all the time, which is cool. And that would be my goal. The big picture is to continue to collaborate with more creators, but then also provide more opportunities for the creative opportunity, creative community, whether it’s through grants submission opportunities or events or something like that. I want to always find that intersection between asking our audience to support us, but we want always to be giving something to our audience.

We’re in a few stores in LA and New York. But yeah, you can find all of our stores and everything. It’s thelunacollective.co And yeah, we’re on Instagram, TikTok, all that jazz. And yeah, if you are in New York or LA, we’re in a few stores there. And we’re pretty much in events. And for most of the major geos, we do stuff in LA, New York, Austin, San Francisco, and sometimes London. So if you’re in any of those cities, definitely keep out. We’re always trying to do events everywhere.

Yeah, it’s tough. I wear it on Instagram as Lunacollectivemag because the Luna Collective is like a fake account. So if anyone can help out with that, let me know.

Yeah, exactly. Yes, I’ve been trying literally for six years. It’s our sixth anniversary this month. And I’ve tried many times, but thank you. But yeah, so we’re .co and I’m fine with that. It looks clean. It looks sleek, but for no confusion, not.com.

Hahaha.

I think I would like to offer a piece of advice because that often comes up and what we were talking about earlier of how to kind of stand up and stand out. And like I said, it’s hard when there are just so many others, there’s so much content being fed to a user and there are so many ways to spend your money online now. And I think what I always try to lean into is leaning into having that direct relationship with your community and with your audience, like keeping it truly a two-way street and they want because there have been a lot of times in the past where we’ve come up with ideas and different merch items or print projects that maybe didn’t sell as well. After all, we didn’t think about the audience’s need for it. It was more internal. And so something we’ve tried to do a lot more is consistently having an open line of communication with our followers. Like, what do you guys want to see from us? Like, do you want us to release more sweatshirts? Do you want beanies? Do you like baseball caps? Like, genuinely, what do you want to see from us? And then to no one’s surprise when we do what they’re looking for, that tends to perform and sell better. So leaning into that relationship with the audience, I think has been most helpful for us. And that’s what I would always try to advise for everyone as well.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.