Nikki Hardin and the "herstory" of skirt!

In 1994, I was living on a tiny island off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, broke and bored with being a freelance writer and longing to have something to read that reflected my life and the lives of the women I knew. So with no capital, it only made perfect sense to throw caution to the wind and start a magazine. After all I had no money, no collateral unless you count a rusty used car, no business plan and no prior experience in the magazine industry. Plus I was planning to start a liberal, feminist-oriented magazine in a bright red southern state, and I was 50 years old, an age when I always thought I’d be settled in a career, not taking a chance on a crazy idea. But it wasn’t the first time I’d gone out on a very shaky limb.

I was born in a rural town in Kentucky and went to small town public schools where I was always chosen last on the playground, failed to develop large breasts in high school and ached to be popular. I eloped on a Greyhound Bus with my boyfriend, when I was 17, just two weeks out of high school, and I was divorced at 27 with three kids to support. Instead of going to work for the post office, as my mother hoped I would, I took the most impractical route and started college when I was 29. I spent the next five years as a single mother and starting-from-scratch student.

If you drew a picture of my career path after I graduated, it would look like a road under construction, with plenty of detours, washouts, dead ends and exit ramps. Nothing in my past had prepared me to start and run a business, much less one that made money. I’m what The New York Times once referred to in an article as an “accidental entrepreneur.” I’m not daring or adventurous or brave. I’m shy, cautious, afraid of change (I even hate to change the clock in my car when Daylight Savings time rolls around) and risk-averse.  Skirt! became a braver, bolder version of me, the woman I’d like to be, the woman that many of us wanted to be. In that sense, it’s both aspirational and inspirational.

The idea for skirt seemed to come out of nowhere or the universe or my subconscious, as I think all good ideas do. One day I was complaining to a friend about my life, my crappy career, being a failure, wanting more. He asked me what I would do if I could choose from anything at all, and I said, “Start a magazine for women”. Then do it, he said. I can’t, I protested, I’m 50. I don’t have any money. I don’t know how. I wanted it to be easy, and I was scared. I thought of a million reasons NOT to answer that calling, but the idea wouldn’t go away. I started talking about it to friends who urged me to do it. I’d take a few steps forward and then get discouraged and they would all lift me up and drag me along behind the idea. Without them, I would never have made it.

When I started skirt! In 1994, there wasn’t anything around quite like it, especially not for women. Our mission was to have a publication that spoke to all sides of a woman’s personality, so that’s why we sometimes describe it as part feminista, part fashionista . If we had an ideal reader, her name would be “Martha Steinem” because most of our readers are kickass liberals who also like to shop and cook and don’t think wearing lipstick means you don’t have a brain.

People were amazed at the first issue because no one had seen anything like it before. It was fresh, very bold, somewhat controversial. It was designed to look much slicker than a local free publication and the ads were meant to be just as stylish as the editorial, something no one else had bothered to do. Almost immediately, we established an emotional connection with our audience, because they sensed we were authentic, not a corporate product or an advertorial vehicle. We were passionate about what we were writing and living and believing, and it came across in print. Skirt! was the real deal, and it was speaking to women with real lives. Suddenly we were reaching women readers and consumers more effectively than daily newspapers or other publications that were much bigger and better financed.

By the time skirt! was 9 ½ years old in 2003, we had established a name and reputation for quality, integrity and innovation in our community, and praise be to all the goddesses from the dawn of time, we were making a profit. We had loyal, often fanatical readers, who stayed with us year after year, and we were drawing readers and contributors from around the country. We had a tiny financial safety net, but after salaries and expenses and making improvements to skirt!, there was nothing left for expanding into other markets. And we needed to expand because imitation skirts were springing up all around us. In some cases, they were direct ripoffs and in others, not-so-subtle variations on our theme. In one blatant instance, the knock-off was actually called “Skirtz!”–no confusion there! It was a free-for-all, and we couldn’t afford lawyers to protect our brand and our trademark. So much of my life had gone into eating, breathing, thinking and feeding skirt!--so many months when I didn’t know if I’d be able to pay the bills. So it was frustrating to have to sit back and watch other strangers borrow our ideas.

In the fall of 2003, five men in suits walked up the steep stairs to our office and proposed that we do business together. They were from a media company, Morris Communications, based in Georgia. The women of skirt! were amused and confused...who were these guys and what did they want? It was like the Mac vs. PC commercials. We were wearing jeans, shouting across the room at each other, loving life and dropping the f bomb and the estrogen bomb. The Pinstriped Suits seemed charming, but we were wary. First we tried to partner up, but it was too complicated to work, and then they offered to buy skirt!. I stalled, said yes, said no, went back to the table, balked at the terms, said no again, agonized, had crying jags, fought with my beloved co-workers who loved our independence, saw a shrink, called my kids, went back to the table, looked at the fact I was 60 and had no savings or retirement fund, named a figure and got it. Celebrated with a bottle of Champagne. Woke up with a hangover, cried, worried I’d made the wrong decision (I’m a Libra!) and went back to work.

If someone tells you it’s easy to sell a business you’ve poured your heart and irritable bowel syndrome into, don’t believe it. You go through mourning. You rebel. You see your shrink more often. You can’t let go of the smallest detail. You kvetch. You forget you don’t own it anymore. You remember you don’t own it anymore. You miss living on the edge. You go back to work.

But here’s the up-side. Selling skirt! meant we could expand and take it to other women in other cities. It meant we had access to resources we’d only dreamed of before. It meant all the skirt! staff had better benefits (love that matching 401k!). It meant a bigger, more sophisticated web site. It meant starting our own line of skirt!books – please check out our new titles while you’re on the site. It meant that if we could imagine it, we could probably find a way to do it. And we are still imagining. 

The best part is that we still have the same skirt! ethos. Our Charleston office runs the way it always did: we are independent thinkers; we have fun; we wear jeans (no pantyhose, please!) or we glam up and go out on the town; and we still drop the f bomb and the estrogen bomb. You can count on us to rebel and talk back, and our owners understand that if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be skirt!. Before a new market launches, their staff comes to the Charleston office to train, and if we do our job right, they go back home and create their own version of a firebrand skirt!.  Because we believe in the United Skirts of America.