Greek website offers fashion tips and more
At the height of the last Greek general election fever, only one media agency managed to run simultaneous interviews with both Prime Minister Costas Simitis and opposition leader Costas Karamanlis. It was neither a newspaper nor a specialized political review, but a women’s online magazine, www.fe-mail.gr, which was established in June of 1999. «Developing the site back then was a very big risk to take,» said Pantelis Tafas, the website’s general manager, to Kathimerini English Edition. «At least as far as Greece was concerned, given that the market was not mature enough to accept such a venture. We followed in the footsteps of other European countries, which were already following the example of the USA and the fact that content sites are those demonstrating the most promising development opportunities; this is what gave us the chance to come all this way.» With no subscription fees and all operation costs covered by the site’s revenues from advertising, www.fe-mail.gr is the brainchild of Tafas, who has made steady progress in combining two separate, yet converging notions: to create an electronic space on the one hand for women to access information concerning their daily lives – ranging from entertainment to practical issues – while, on the other, generate interest on a variety of issues open to discussion. «The site was created in order to help the public, especially women who were looking for information online,» said Tafas of the only organized women’s online magazine in Greece. Shopping and talking www.fe-mail.gr covers broad editorial ground including tips on fashion and its trends, beauty and shopping, television and astrology, interviews with an array of personalities from the realms of politics and business, social issues as well as opportunities for career advancement, relationships between parents and children, entertainment (including a direct link with Athens guide Athinorama as well as a website focusing on the burgeoning hip area of Psyrri), a column on cars, health and nutrition, not to mention gastronomy – from lentils to champagne, these regular columns focus on the product’s history and production, recipes and the proper way of consuming it – also on the list of subjects is Greece and its relationships with other countries. According to Tafas, a large part of the website’s success has to do with its staff – the women journalists who, while already active in the field of media, working in newspapers, television or radio, wished to go online professionally. «Also, the site’s construction is more unique,» noted Tafas. «Given that we ventured out early, Greek women feel that we are trustworthy, while we also have built up great trust on the part of the advertising sector; a number of products and services are featured on our site, ranging from banks to consumer goods for women with companies such as L’Oreal, Unilever, as well as fashion brands such as Nike, Calvin Klein and Donna Karan.» Furthermore, a number Greek designers, whether up-and-coming or established, have been featured on the site, using the online platform to present outfits not presented elsewhere. Beyond its online editorial activities, the website has also become a forum for broader discussion, while Tafas travels extensively abroad in order to participate in a number of international events: In Brussels, for instance, he attended an international conference for the abolition of the death penalty, where Bianca Jagger was one of the principal speakers. Jagger, a fierce advocate for the abolition of the death penalty chose to give two interviews during the event: One was to the Italian newspaper La Stampa, the other one to the Greek website. Another event, this time on Greek soil, took place in March 2000, when the website was behind the first open online debate for MPs; The list of participants included Vasso Papandreou, Dora Bakoyianni and Maria Damanaki. In September 2001, www.fe-mail.gr organized a Pan-European conference under the auspices of the European Union in collaboration with the University of Athens and the Athens Bar Association; the main topic of interest was the future of national labor law within the framework of the economic and monetary union. This conference led Tafas to develop yet another site, www.working.gr, which became an online library for issues related to the workplace. (The website was supported by the European Union.) Great hits With regular updates of its content, the site enjoys 15,000 to 18,000 visitors per month. Its audience is 99-percent working women, and 85 percent of these women are aged between 18 and 49. A majority of these, 58 percent, go online at work; 69 percent of the women live in Greece, while 26 percent live abroad. E-commerce has also been a part of the website’s activities. Tafas launched a six-month e-commerce offensive which turned out to be extremely popular, but, due to the great demand it generated, had to be suspended, in order for the service to resurface at a later date with the proper infrastructure. Visitors to www.fe-mail.gr, will presently view the website’s Greek version, while English, German, French and Spanish versions are due to appear at some later stage, a development that attests to Tafas’s ambition to bring the site to the attention of a wider European women’s audience.
