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Eye on the prize

If you bought the first issue of Monocle, you made a good investment. Three years ago the price of the magazine was GBP5. Now it's worth GBP100. The rise in value, although unexpected, doesn't surprise media maestro Tyler Brule, who founded the high-brow, high-culture, high-priced publication after laying down design-cum-lifestyle laws in Wallpaper*, the trendsetting magazine that made his name.

'There are only 13 left [of the inaugural edition],' he says archly, suppressing, it seems, the urge to add: 'Duh, as things become rarer, they increase in price.'

What's worked for the magazine appears to be doing the same for the store it spawned, which has tiny permanent outlets in London and Los Angeles, with more planned this year, in Tokyo, Toronto, New York and Hong Kong. In a run-up to staking its turf in Wan Chai in mid-year, Monocle last week set up shop in Lane Crawford, enticing neophytes and aficionados alike with limited-edition items and 'entry-level' goods (meaning affordable if you shop at Lane Crawford anyway).

At the 'seasonal shop', which will occupy a corner of Lane Crawford Home Store for five weeks, a light bulb attached to a clamp sells for HK$1,850, a small wooden table for HK$11,000, and a BlackBerry for HK$11,650. Produced in collaboration with Monocle, and all limited editions, they sit (more or less) underneath the main item they support: Monocle magazine, whose strapline reads: 'A briefing on global affairs, business, culture and design'. Back issues, all 32 of them, are displayed on shelves out of reach of pint-sized paws. The May volume, which includes an urban survey of Hong Kong and is the only one at browsing level, sells for HK$95, a relative bargain because by the time the next issue comes out it will be twice the price.

'There's no better way to say this has value, at a time when everyone's devaluing print,' says Brule.

Like the magazine, which has 13,500 subscribers in 82 countries, the store, he says, targets, 'children of the late 60s or early 70s'. Designs have a certain nostalgia to them, such as the oak Ovalen IV table, which is a remake of one of Swede Carl Malmsten's last designs. Brule, 41, who describes it as masculine in terms of material but dainty in form, says: 'It's very 'granny's house', but that's why we love it.'

Also harking back to simpler times are the no-nonsense canvas Porter bags, made in Japan, which range from HK$1,950 for the wallet to HK$4,950 for the Boston bag. Their prices - like that of an old-fashioned pushbike (HK$10,500) parked at their stores as if Ingrid Bergman just dropped by - reflect their provenance and production costs. 'The [Swedish-made] bicycle is not smacked together in a factory in Shenzhen,' he says. 'You have to pay for EU labour costs.'

So popular are the bags that a British newspaper article implied their sales will fund a Monocle bureau, opening in Hong Kong in conjunction with the permanent shop in June/July. An exaggeration, but they are among the store's biggest revenue generators, Brule says. Other bureaus have been set up in London, New York, Tokyo and Zurich.

He says the space the company is leasing in Wan Chai is its new media model, which places back to back, literally, its journalistic endeavours and retail extension: the front will be the store and the back the bureau. 'The shop pays for the real estate,' he says.

Although Monocle outlets and pop-up stores have gained an enthusiastic following, not everyone has warmed to such small retail spaces selling only a select number of goods. One reviewer, commenting on its nine-square-metre Marylebone venue, wrote: 'It's a shop. For a magazine. About as big as a loo. It sells magazines. And, erm, some other design pfaff. But not much.'

Then there are those who recoil from a sales pitch that implies: 'Pare back, but consume.' Brule doesn't baulk at the apparent inconsistency. 'You don't need to invest in 1,000 things,' he says, 'but you do need to invest if you want something that's going to last.'

The Monocle Shop at Lane Crawford Home Store in Pacific Place closes on May 23.

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