Air Mail, the cosmopolitan digital media company founded by the former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, has hired the boutique investment bank Raine Group to explore a sale, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential process.
Air Mail hired the bank in recent weeks after receiving interest from potential buyers, said the people, who would not identify the suitors. Talks are still early, and may not result in a deal.
Air Mail has 34 full-time employees in New York, where it is based, and contributors in Milan, Paris and London. The company, which was founded in 2019, is known for its weekend email newsletter of deeply reported features, travel recommendations and shopping tips.
Mr. Carter, who founded Spy Magazine before embarking on a quarter-century run as Vanity Fair’s top editor, has sought to expand Air Mail through a series of business ventures in recent years. The company started an online store, called Air Supply, that offered clubby staples like branded hats and tote bags, along with odds and ends including a brass desktop “comfortmeter” and Portuguese pencils. It also opened a brick-and-mortar storefront — Air Mail Newsstand — in the West Village in New York, where it peddles twee sundries including stationery from Kyoto and Christophe Pourny soaps.
Early this year, Semafor reported that Standard Investments, a private fund with connections to an industrial firm known for its roofing business, was in talks to acquire Air Mail for $50 million. Those talks are no longer active, said the two people familiar with the exploration of a sale of Air Mail.
Mr. Carter plans to continue his involvement with Air Mail, which has 500,000 subscribers for its newsletter, in the event of a sale, one of the people said.
Along the way, Air Mail has attracted investment from a variety of players in finance and media. David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery and a friend of Mr. Carter’s, is an investor, as is the private-equity giant TPG and RedBird Capital Partners. So far, the digital media company has raised $32 million at an undisclosed valuation.
In addition to its weekly email newsletter, Air Mail has started several podcasts, including “Table for Two,” a conversation show with the raconteur Bruce Bozzi, and another podcast with Mark Seal, who is developing a show based on his book “Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli” about the making of “The Godfather.” The company also plans to roll out a literary podcast hosted by the actress Emma Roberts, whose credits include “American Horror Story” and who co-founded the online reading community Belletrist.
The post Air Mail, Digital Weekly for the Smart Set, Is Said to Be Exploring a Sale appeared first on New York Times.
