The retail magazine setting a Benchmark

MANILA, Philippines - It announced its presence quietly enough — a black-and-white portrait of 17-year-old actress Julia Barretto with an artful “B” as a flower in her hair. But a little over a week later, the first issue’s sizable print had sold out. And suddenly, a new magazine was born.

Benchmark is a quarterly magazine produced by the Bench group of companies, that highlights its retail muscle but also the culture it springs from. More than a product catalog, it’s a real magazine with an eye for local culture, with editorials from some of this generation’s best photographers and stylists, writing from great writers, and a keen eye for local culture’s movers. Bench has tapped a young group of creatives to make this vision come to life.

“Benchmark is for Bench’s target market — the average Filipino,” editor in chief Raymond Ang (who also serves as editor of The Philippine STAR’s Young STAR) explains. “Some people have asked me if they think the target market will understand the more art-inclined features or the editorials that are looking to push boundaries a bit, but I don’t think that’s a problem because I think this is a market that is very much open to ideas and aspirational.”

In the first issue, for example, the raw, non-glossy style of photographer Steve Tirona was applied to the universal, undeniably commercial beauty of cover girl Julia Barretto. The cover presented the young actress in a remarkably different way, exposing the innocence and promise underneath the gloss. It also reintroduced an aesthetic that the masses might not be used to.

“It’s all about making sure the right people are collaborating and you know when you’re crossing the line,” Ang says.

For their second issue, Benchmark focuses on skin, grooming, and beauty — perfect for the summer season. Benchmark’s take on “The Skin Issue” is different, though. “The philosopher Charles B. Handy once said, ‘The moment will arrive when you are comfortable with who you are, and what you are — bald or old or fat or poor, successful or struggling — when you don’t feel the need to apologize for anything or to deny anything. To be comfortable in your own skin is the beginning of strength,’” Ang says in his editor’s note. The cover features a compelling photograph of leading man for the ages arm-wrestling with Bench hunk Borgy Manotoc.

“From new Bench endorser Dominique Cojuangco ably handling controversy and family baggage to cover stars Richard Gomez and Borgy Manotoc reminding us that physical beauty is only as compelling as the mind and the philosophy that accompany it, Benchmark’s second issue doesn’t just want you to get pretty,” Ang writes. “It asks you to find pretty — in the world you’re in, the life you lead, and in the skin you live in.”

* * *

Get a free copy of Benchmark at all Bench, Kashieca, and Human stores with a P1,200 worth of purchases.