Urban Outfitters Pairing With Nylon Magazine

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Come September, every Urban Outfitters in the country will be selling Nylon Magazine-branded goods. The retailer and the fashion magazine have teamed up, seemingly indefinitely, to bring Urban shoppers Nylon t-shirts, CDs, DVDs, books and more. Clearly, this will garner Nylon some extra exposure while Urban Outfitters can profit over the magazine's hip quotient. Example: Nylon-approved indie band the Plasticines are going to perform at the Urban Outfitters in Soho on September 6th to launch the partnership. If it goes well, they'll be debuting other Nylon goods.

"We're going to do a hoodie for holiday," said [Nylon Ed-in-Chief Marvin Scott] Jarrett. "There's talk about us doing housewares and we're naturally growing into other areas such as jewelry. We're also doing something with the MP3 player rival to the iPod, the Zune. We did a customized pink Zune that's covered with graphics." [Urban Outfitter creative director Kevin] Lyons said Urban is open to any product category Nylon suggests. On the drawing board are cut-and-sew sweatshirts, T-shirt dresses, hats, customized plates, pillows and other artist-series items. "As the line grows, both of us can grow together," he said.

You have to wonder if Nylon will end up offending its base readership by teaming up with the likes of generally un-hip Urban. Also, a customized Zune? That seems like a particularly dubious move.
· Nylon Comes to Urban Outfitters [WWD, subscription req]