SheKnows Media’s Tool for Growth: Girl Power

Brand growth is a trending topic across all industries, but the path to get there is rarely smooth. SheKnows Media is achieving growth, revolutionizing the publishing industry and inspiring women all at the same time.

Known as the world’s leading women’s lifestyle digital media company, SheKnows Media has a mission we can all agree on: to empower a community of women to explore, share and pursue their passions.

[SheKnows Media]

“We’re really focused on our mission of women inspiring women,” said Samantha Sistek, SheKnows Media’s Corporate Controller. “We connect bloggers and online content creators with our award-winning editorial team to help them learn how to create even better online content.”

SheKnows Media, with about 110 employees in New York, Arizona, and various remote locations, consists of SheKnows.com, BlogHer.com, HelloFlo.com and StyleCaster. Altogether, the brand publishes content around parenting, pop culture, fashion, food, DIY and decor, to name a few. As part of its business model, SheKnows Media actively listens to the input of its community’s interests and feedback to provide more relative content.

On top of inspiring 81 unique website visitors per month and 309 million social media followers, SheKnows Media also hosts the world’s leading conferences for female content creators. The conferences features keynote speakers who advocate for women empowerment, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Serena Williams and even President Barack Obama.

When SheKnows Media acquired BlogHer.com, HelloFlo.com and StyleCaster, it didn't take long to realize that the lack of data integration hampered business efficiency. Though SheKnows Media had been using NetSuite since 2013, the acquisitions added even more data sources to the ERP bucket.

"We were sitting with three ERP systems," said Franklin Vincent, SheKnows Media’s CFO at the time of the merger. "In order to support the growth in our business and continue helping marketers reach their audience through passionate content creators and influencers, we knew we needed to conquer the challenge of a multitude of disparate data sources.


Soon after the new brands were a part of the SheKnows Media empire, executives made the decision to migrate away from all of their systems, including Sage Intacct, onto NetSuite OneWorld.

“NetSuite has been an amazingly flexible and powerful tool for us to integrate these data points,” Vincent said. “Our decision-making has been enhanced by our ability to create the right views of products that has informed us not only about our current business, but has provided support for launching new products.”

SheKnows Media was recently acquired by Penske Media, which parents other leading digital media organizations such as Rolling Stone, WWD, Variety and Deadline.

According to the Wall Street Journal, SheKnows Media CEO Philippe Guelton said that SheKnows Media’s voice will complement Penske Media’s current audience, and the acquisition will allow Penske Media to reach more consumers, which will in turn attract different advertisers. Just as SheKnows Media will be a nice culture fit, the transition will also be aided by the fact that Penske Media uses NetSuite’s OneWorld platform as well.

“It was pretty clear in that process that NetSuite was a great tool for integrating businesses,” Vincent said. “A lot of the data coming out of NetSuite is data we can provide to our influencers and third-party content creators to empower the community of women to explore, share and pursue their passions."

On May 10, NetSuite will be hosting a webinar featuring Sistek who will go deeper into SheKnows Media’s journey with NetSuite.

“An accounting system shouldn’t stand in your way; it should help you do what you need to do,” Sistek said. “[NetSuite is] really limitless in what you can do with it. I haven’t found something that I can’t do yet.”

Register to hear Sistek share how NetSuite OneWorld has empowered their business to grow and continue to inspire women worldwide.