"Our advertisers have told us that for every $1,000 they spend, people who click through are likely to spend between $1,000 and $2,000," Hartley claimed of trips people have made to a brand's shopping site via its ad on ZooZoom. This may help explain why more advertisers haven't been quicker to buy into the 'zine. Neiman Marcus, for example, was hoping for consumers who click through to its shopping site to spend at around the $10,000 level, over time, the ceo acknowledged. (For $1,000, advertisers can gain exposure to up to 6,600 people.)

Between 12 and 27 percent of viewers of fashion ads at ZooZoom have clicked-through to the fashion brands' own Web sites; 4 to 8 percent have visited beauty sites via the ads. Typically, more people have visited brand sites via Flash-animated ads like ones now running from Redux (24 percent) and Net-a-porter (22 percent) than for static ads that look like richly colored, print magazine spreads, such as Custo Barcelona's current placement (13 percent), according to Hartley. About half the site's ads have run in Flash, he estimated.

Brands such as Michael Kors, Marc Jacobs, Diane von Furstenberg and Bergdorf Goodman are among those whose ads ZooZoom would most like to attract. Ditto for past advertisers Neiman's and Chanel. To this end, the e-zine is seeking to meet with these fashion players at an event it would stage in October at Soho House in New York's Meatpacking District.

ZooZoom has no plans to pump the venture capitalist pool from which money has flowed into many a dot-com start-up and relaunch. Instead, it is intent on remaining wholly financed by its four partners — David McIntyre, Kelley Quan, Martin Cooper and Hartley. "The VCs are drawn to mass market beauty brands to meet their [financial] targets and that's not what we want," Hartley said of the luxury fashion 'zine. "We want advertisers."