Barnato | Brand & Editorial
In pursuit of better things.
The automotive media landscape may be a mile wide, but it’s generally just an inch deep. That’s why I co-founded Barnato, a premium online editorial platform with me as editorial and content lead. Barnato reimagined car culture not as an end in itself, but rather as the beginning of a broader world of style, art, music, and travel. It even had a business model: curated e-comm seamlessly integrated into the platform. The result was part Neiman Marcus catalog, part Vanity Fair, but after our Series-D funding failed to raise the $15,000,000 (Zimbabwean) required for our next phase of growth, the venture was sunset. Nevertheless Barnato’s spirit lives on in our broken cars and drive for adventure.
Doing it for the Babes.
Before we could launch our plucky little website, we needed a name. And we found it in one Woolf “Babe” Barnato. Born rich beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, Barnato had a yen for action. He was a swimmer, a boxer, a first-class cricketer, and when WWI broke out he left Cambridge to join the Royal Field Artillery, rising to the rank of Captain.
After the war, Barnato became one of the fabulous Bentley Boys, winning Le Mans three out of three times. And on a bet, he commissioned a special Bentley—complete with crystal bar set—just to prove he could beat Le Train Bleu back to Calais from the Riviera. (Spoiler: by the time the train reached the Channel, Barnato was already at his London apartment.) Incidentally, he also saved Bentley from insolvency. But whatever he did, it was always with panache and joie de vivre. And it ran in the family: his daughter, Diana Barnato Walker, was the first British woman to break the sound barrier.
Making dollars makes sense.
If there’s one thing Barnato wouldn’t make us, it was the first car blog on the internet. But we were the first to recognize that existing sites which had started as commentary now had to awkwardly back themselves into a profit model of some kind. The result: a never-ending scroll of disparate content interspersed with Amazon affiliate links to jumper cables. That’s not premium, and it’s not good business.
But it is, however, why we built Barnato as an e-comm site wrapped in an editorial layer. Referral links supported the site financially, which funded editorial. Editorial then established the site’s POV and built its credibility, driving traffic. Traffic then clicked on the referral links. It might not have been a virtuous cycle, but it was definitely a cashflow positive one.
We’re in the business of expanding horizons.
In a sense, Barnato was a style blog. But as the Earl of Chesterfield said, “style is the dress of thoughts.” And Barnato was not in the business of telling people what to think. When we spoke about watches, shoes, home decor or anything that fell into our editorial crosshairs, our filter was quality and point of view, not price. That’s why we never explained things the audience should already know, nor did we condescend to those who didn’t. If you didn’t know what we were talking about right off the bat, you’d figure it out shortly. Our job was to make our readers feel at ease, and welcome them into a world of possibilities. Where those readers started their journey wasn’t important. Only that they wanted to push further. That’s the Barnato way.
