SSEDITORIAL MAGAZINE was launched in July 2020 after the British writer Sama Reid-Campbell received feedback on her anonymous website about her journalism skills. During the 2020 pandemic, Sama witnessed the heartbreaking death of George Floyd and decided to take positive action to stamp out prejudiced attitudes that lead to discrimination. Sama’s earliest work can be traced back to 2011. However, she made her work digitally accessible in 2018 after she attended university, which negatively impacted her mental health. After two years of journalism, she attended a Women-in-Leadership event. She decided she wanted to work with other journalists and writers to amplify the voices and portfolios of some of the world’s biggest artists.
Before SSEDITORIAL Magazine was launched, Sama discussed how mental health affected young people, food, nutrition, and the runway. She has participated in the fashion industry since 2005 and was often shamed in her youth for recreating runway looks in reality.
In 2020, SSEDITORIAL Magazine was called “Sarah-Ama’s Editorial”; some of our internal documents are still labelled as such! She believed this name was too long and decided to shorten it. While many can pronounce our name, it is often mispronounced, with people spelling the double “S” instead of saying our name as one word. Our name is SSEDITORIAL, and we are an editorial with an “S” at the beginning!
After our official name change and attending a Women’s Event, Sama knew from that moment that she wanted to own and run the modern world’s most successful magazine. She wanted to focus on artists who cared about their craft, not just those who garner attention for botched personalities. Too often, she saw many artists she revered not get the praise they deserved, and she aimed to change that. In August, she opened our doors to external writers, and by September 2021, our first batch of writers and journalists arrived.
Initially, we had fashion and style contributors and beauty contributors. Sama then realised she wanted a consistent stream of runway commentary on sseditorial.com, so in February 2023, our first-ever batch of runway contributors joined the fray. In March 2024, we absorbed more talent into our lifestyle division and in April 2024, we secured our first-ever culture contributor! It was then Sama birthed our core five pillars: Fashion, Beauty, Lifestyle, Runway, and Culture.
Under Sama’s leadership, we have doubled our all-time views, increased the number of articles our visitors read in one sitting, successfully sold recommended products via our affiliate links, and partnered with some of the world’s most-known brands (Getty, Shutterstock, Netflix, FirstView, Launchmetrics Spotlight and Amazon).
In ten years (2030-2032), we aim to dominate the magazine readership industry. We want to be known for our story-telling abilities via our articles and the one source of truth for international leaders. We want to form a global network of artists, creative directors, writers, journalists, photographers, videographers, assistants and technology experts to shape the future or, at the very least, have a heavy hand in shaping the future.
Through our ongoing efforts to improve and remain consistent, we stand for quality over quantity, being flexible to new-scale approaches, practising prudence and supporting our people.
