Briony Somers is the co-founder and editor in chief of FRANC magazine. Here she discusses her influences, running a business with ethical ambitions and the shades of inequality in the startup scene.
If you ask Briony Somers what she does, she will say: ‘I run a fashion magazine.’ However, FRANC, the first vertical in a growing range of products in the FRANC stable, is not a typical fashion magazine. Somers, herself, explains that FRANC was created because she doesn’t read fashion magazines and felt there was ‘a world full of people’ who probably didn’t read fashion magazines.
Born in England, Somers moved to Ireland at age 10 and grew up in Durrus, West Cork. Her mother Carmel, a chef, established the Good Things Café and cooking school in the town, a background that gave Briony an appreciation for starting and building a business with ‘things and objects that were available at the time’.
Somers doesn’t use the typical language of a founder in their early 20s. Ideas and threads of thought weave around the subjects under discussion. There are no hard answers, no buzzwords or talk about demographic target markets, disruption or innovation. Somers is, however, very sure about the direction she wants to steer her business.
“People who ‘reject you’ are often the people you shouldn’t work with. You could say it’s a filtering process.”
IDEAS
When you pick up a copy of FRANC it feels like an expression, a mood, much as it is a publication. It was started on Somer’s belief that there is a growing tribe of young women who value quality and permanence over the fleeting ‘information snacks’ served up by social media apps.
In a world so defined by two-dimensional ‘insta-images’ slipping fast across tiny screens, FRANC is a stark expression of the senses – it exhales design, craft, writing, photography, and quiet contemplation.
Somers has an ambition, a business model, and
