How Man of Many grew into the largest men's lifestyle media outlet in Australia

Frank Arthur and Scott Purcell realized early on that content consistency was paramount.

Image via Bandt

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Like many great media brands, Man of Many grew out of a personal obsession.

Specifically, it was an obsession held by Frank Arthur and Scott Purcell, two Sydney-based roommates who lived together for about eight years. Both harbored a deep fascination with high-end luxury goods, to the point that they’d find themselves emailing each other throughout the day about new product launches. “I'm a bit of a nerd and tech head, so I focused a lot on gadgety stuff,” Purcell told me in an interview. “Frank has a background in design, so he was interested in street wear, tech products, cars, and whiskey.” They especially loved limited edition and hard-to-find products.  

The two often found themselves reading US-based men’s lifestyle websites like Uncrate and Cool Material, and in the early 2010s they began to notice that there weren’t really any Australian equivalents to these sites. “Even a lot of the men's magazines like [Australian] GQ or Esquire — I don't even know if they had a website at that time,” said Purcell. “Or if they did, it was very, very basic.” The two began to sketch out an idea for a website that would cater to their interests and fill a gap in the Australian media market. 

In 2012, they launched Man of Many, a website that covers men’s lifestyle interests ranging from health to consumer products to pop culture. Though neither founder had a large personal brand or connections in the industry, they stayed consistent in their content production and, without any outside investment, managed to grow Man of Many into the largest men’s lifestyle outlet in Australia. Today, the brand generates over 5.8 million pageviews a month and boasts 650,000 subscribers on social media.

How did they accomplish this? In a recent interview, Purcell walked me through their early growth strategies, their approach to monetization, and their expansion into new topic areas and content verticals.

Let’s jump into my findings…

Keeping it simple

Arthur and Purcell both had day jobs — in design and finance, respectively — and they knew that their only chance at sticking to a consistent publishing schedule was if they kept their content extremely simple. “We featured one product per day with very short descriptions,” said Purcell. He’d seen other bootstrapped media outlets churn out a large volume of content and then flame out because they couldn’t sustain their production schedule.  “So one product a day was really realistic for us, and it meant that every time someone came back to the website, they had something new to look at each day.”