Santa Fe Magazine

What Santa Fe Magazine does

Santa Fe Magazine is a privately-held cultural media company founded in 2020 by Owen Lipstein and John Miller and headquartered at 795 Camino Del Monte Sol in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The company publishes a print and digital magazine featuring long-form profiles and interviews with the city's artists, mystics, scientists, and civic figures, positioning itself as the definitive chronicle of Santa Fe's creative community. The publication launched with an initial print run of 5,000 copies during a period its founders describe as an 'extinction event' for print media, and now operates in its sixth year with an 11-50 person team across editorial, circulation, operations, and production functions.

Name

Santa Fe Magazine

Legal name

Santa Fe Magazine, LLC

Website

https://santafemagazine.co

Company type

Private

Founded year

2020

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Santa Fe Magazine is a privately-held Santa Fe, New Mexico-based cultural media company that publishes a print and digital magazine chronicling local artists, mystics, and community figures, supplemented by branded merchandise, collector's editions, and an annual festival.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Local Print & Digital Magazine Publishing

SIC

Periodicals: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2721)

akta.pro primary industry

Arts, Culture & Literary Magazines (MPAJAEAN)

akta.pro secondary industry

Humor, Gift & Specialty Format Books (Journals, Coloring, etc.) (MPAJAAAN)

Keywords

• Local magazine publishing
• Cultural journalism
• Print magazine subscription
• Community storytelling
• Lifestyle publication

Headquarters

HQ city

Santa Fe

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Supply Chain, Others

Revenue model

1. Magazine Subscriptions: Recurring subscription revenue from print and digital magazine subscriptions, with options for individual issues, annual subscriptions, and gift subscriptions through the ezsubscription.com platform.
2. Merchandise Sales: E-commerce sales of branded merchandise including apparel (t-shirts, hoodies, long sleeve tees) and accessories (tote bags, baseball caps) sold through the company's online shop.
3. Festival Tickets: Revenue generated from ticket sales for the annual Santa Fe Magazine Festival, with VIP experiences and general admission passes, scheduled to launch June 12-14, 2026.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels2 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Santa Fe Magazine publishes a print and digital magazine featuring in-depth interviews with Santa Fe's artists, mystics, scientists, outliers, and visionaries. The company sells individual issue and annual subscriptions, gift subscriptions, and collector's editions through its own website and ezsubscription.com, and also offers branded merchandise, a coffee table book, and tickets to its annual three-day cultural festival.

Product overview

Santa Fe Magazine is a print and digital publication that chronicles the people and culture of Santa Fe, New Mexico through in-depth interviews with local artists, mystics, scientists, outliers and visionaries. The company operates as a single unified publication with several related offerings: its core magazine (print and digital subscriptions), an annual multi-day cultural festival featuring talks, concerts and immersive experiences, a coffee table book ('I Am Santa Fe') compiling highlights from four years of issues, branded merchandise (apparel and accessories), newsletter subscriptions, and collector's edition issues. These offerings form an integrated ecosystem centered on capturing and sharing Santa Fe's cultural identity.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Partnerships

Two partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• MEA (Midlife Wisdom School)coreGTM or Marketing PartnerMEA, a Midlife Wisdom School targeting people in their 40s-70s, is the presenting sponsor of the inaugural Santa Fe Magazine Festival. The partnership positions the festival within MEA's wellness-focused programming and provides festival ticketing integration with MEA's audience.
• St. John's CollegecoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerFestival venue partner at St. John's College Santa Fe campus, providing the Grand Hall and campus grounds for festival programming. The college's Great Books curriculum and historic Santa Fe campus shaped by John Gaw Meem and Alexander Girard serves as the festival setting.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Garden & Gun: Regional lifestyle and culture magazine focused on the Southern US, with an active events business and lifestyle merchandise line. Comparable because it sells a curated regional identity through print, events, and commerce.
• Cowboys & Indians: Western/Southwest arts, culture, and lifestyle magazine. Comparable as a regional magazine serving a culturally similar audience with deep roots in the American Southwest creative community.
• Texas Monthly: Long-running regional culture and lifestyle magazine covering Texas, with an established festival (Texas Monthly Festival) and merchandise/brand extensions. Most directly comparable to Santa Fe Magazine's model of a regional culture publication that has expanded into events and ancillary products.
• Oxford American: Regional literary and culture magazine with a strong archival voice and a small, dedicated team. Comparable as a niche arts-and-culture publication that monetizes through subscriptions and ancillary products.
• Sunset Magazine: Western US lifestyle and culture magazine (with strong Southwest coverage) that has historically combined print publishing, branded events, and product merchandising. Overlapping in both geography-adjacent and business-model terms with Santa Fe Magazine.

Broad incumbents

• Vanity Fair: National culture and celebrity-profile magazine. Founder Owen Lipstein previously worked at Vanity Fair; comparable in its focus on in-depth profiles of cultural figures, though operating at a national scale.
• The New Yorker: National arts, culture, and literary publication with in-depth profiles and cultural journalism. Comparable in editorial format and voice, though at vastly greater scale and broader geographic reach.

Emerging players

• Edible (regional magazines): Network of regional food and culture magazines operating in similar local-content models. Comparable as fellow small-team, locally rooted culture publications with subscription and event monetization.
• The Bitter Southerner: Digital-first regional culture publication that built a brand around authentic Southern storytelling, with merchandise and events. Comparable as a culturally-rooted publication with a similar profile-driven editorial voice.

Regional players

• Pasatiempo: Weekly arts and culture section historically associated with The Santa Fe New Mexican. Most direct in-market comparator for Santa Fe Magazine's coverage of the same local cultural ecosystem.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Facebookfacebook.com/santafemagazine
• Instagraminstagram.com/santafemagazine

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Santa Fe Magazine