#2-Year-Old Bustle Launches a New Site That Will Cater to Millennial Moms

Romper is for millennial parents, by millennial parents. Romper.com

Coming off a successful first two years, female-skewing website Bustle is expanding into territory it believes is underserved: millennial mothers.

Bustle today took the wraps off a new stand-alone property called Romper .

Bustle notes that 83 percent of new moms are millennials and that the average age of women when they have their first child is 26. That s where editors saw an opening.

There actually is no publication for millennial parents [written] by millennial parents, said Margaret Wheeler Johnson, who will lead Romper. The media talks about millennials as though they are the kids when in fact they re having kids and already have them.

And Wheeler Johnson should know she s been with Bustle since its inception in 2013 and was previously the founding editor of The Huffington Post s women s section. She s a millennial, and she s the mother of a 10-month-old.

Bustle has an audience advertisers crave. Women between 18 and 34 make up half of its nearly 32 million monthly visitors. There are so many women in their 20s who have kids who are a part of our larger audience, Wheeler Johnson said. Walgreens has signed on to be Romper s launch sponsor.

Romper, which began as an experiment on Bustle, has been in the works for more than a year. The tone and style of Romper will be similar to that of Bustle with stories like 5 Friends Every Woman With Kids Needs In Her Squad and 13 Genius Hacks for New Moms, From New Moms.

We definitely felt that as our demo is growing and growing up, we want to grow with them. And our clients want to see the same thing, said Bustle founder Bryan Goldberg.

In keeping with a recent trend among publishers, Romper is designed to be mobile-first. (Goldberg noted that nearly 85 percent of Bustle s readership comes from mobile devices. [For millennials,] this is the new normal, he said.)

Despite a shaky start. Bustle is on target to bring in $10 million in revenue for 2015. That s good enough for the 2-year-old site to turn a profit, Goldberg said. Its 31.6 million unique visitors in September put it right behind a category leader, PopSugar, which drew nearly 39 million visitors for the month.

This week, PopSugar upped its co-founder and editor in chief Lisa Sugar to president, in which role she will focus on the brand s international growth. As for Bustle s expansion, Sugar believes there s room for newcomers. The audience is absolutely large enough to support many points of view, she said.

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