Now a year into circulation, bi-monthly glossy Porter magazine is often held up as an example of how print is rallying against the “dying medium” label. When it launched last February, Porter was the first new fashion magazine to hit the newsstands for some time, and certainly the first to so quickly draw comparisons with the reigning queen of the genre, the 123-year old Vogue.

Aiming to fly in the face of other women’s magazines, whose circulations are collectively dwindling – February’s ABCs show that only two of the top 10 women’s monthlies grew their circulation in the past year – Porter is bold, beautiful and has a well-thought through approach. The magazine is now available in 60 countries and has a circulation of 152,000 – not that far behind Vogue’s 191,000 .

In essence, Porter is a tasteful fashion magazine with the top-notch production values you’d expect and a consistently A-list cover star. But it’s also a glossy with a difference: as it subtly states on the cover, it’s ‘powered by Net-a-porter’, the high-end fashion retailer that owns it. Net-a-porter clothes are expertly curated across its pages, alongside interviews, articles and beautiful photography. There’s also an advert subtly positioned at the bottom of each section: shop Porter with the Net-a-porter app.

In a journey designed to be seamless, readers can scan the paper pages using a dedicated iPad app (or use the iPad edition) to quickly buy the coveted outfit or accessory.

Clearly Porter operates in a niche market – not every mainstream brand can count the designer-label crowd (with a household income north of £150,000) as its target audience. But there are definitely lessons that can be taken from the Porter story and applied across the board, whether you’re moving into or optimising content marketing as a fashion brand, furniture store or anything in between.

1 Work with a quality, experienced editorial team
The Porter team is credential-laden, made up of ex-fashion and beauty journalists. The editor-in-chief, Lucy Yeomans, is formerly of Harper’s Bazaar and Net-a-porter founder Natalie Massenet worked for Tatler in a former life. It’s key to have the right blend of skills to create a newsstand experience and it takes experience to put together a quality product both on and offline.

2 Invest to ensure a fantastic, competitive product
You only have to look at the style greats who have graced its covers (Gisele Bündchen on the launch issue, Lara Stone, Cate Blanchett, Natalia Vodianova on the latest issue), let alone fill its pages, to know that it’s hit the right notes. Far from the catalogue some were predicting, the Porter team know that it’s about the soft sell – so they feature Net-a-porter clothes, but amongst a range of other products, combined with appealing editorial content.

3 Make good use of tech
Having moved from a clever online site into print, and not the other way around as most brands do, Porter had a good springboard. And they’ve managed to keep the offline-to-online experience slick and intuitive, with their scannable pages and apps. The tech enhances the experience rather than being tacked on, and there’s also plenty of potential for further developments with their digital-savvy audience.

4 Have clear ambitions and always plan for the next phase
Already written in American English, the team are planning to make Porter the first global magazine in fashion. It’s stocked in over 6,000 shops in the UK, 10,000 in the US and is available in a further 58 countries around the world. Net-a-porter.com also stocks it – so it will be available to 6 million international fashion-loving women every month. The site makes the magazine and offering truly global.

5 Consider relevant diversification
Completing the luxury retail loop, for brands not available in the Net-a-porter store there’s also a concierge service, available 24 hours a day in 20 languages, to allow you to access the Dolce & Gabbana jacket you so covet. Brands should always consider relevant extensions and diversifications.

Maybe Porter will bring about the renaissance of fashion print titles. As Massenet herself pointed out, fashion has always been synonymous with print. But more than that, Porter also proves that clever content marketing is still very much in vogue. Given the right mix of team, editorial and experience, this approach can pay dividends.

Michael Temprano is the fashion director at Publicis Blueprint

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