Urban Outfitters Invests in a Little MoXIE

Urban Outfitters, a Philadelphia-based clothing chain catering to teens and young adults, said it made a strategic minority investment in HMB Publishing Inc. of Manhattan Beach. HMB publishes the so-called magalog, moXIEgirl, which caters to teenage girls. A magalog is a catalog that has feature articles of a magazine. The next edition of moXIEgirl will be available later this month. Urban Outfitters said the investment is well under $1 million. It said it could increase its investment and ownership percentage. moXIEgirl is among a handful of new catalogs catering to teenage girls, a potentially large market for the mail-order industry. While teenage girls are big spenders, it isn’t clear whether parents will allow them to run up big mail-order charges.