Fishbowl Five: Garden & Gun's Rebecca Wesson Darwin

Rebecca Wesson Darwin was only planning to be in New York City for a year, spurred by that all-too-common post-graduate curiosity about big city life. But an internship on the business side at GQ turned into a full-time job, then a promotion, and then a move to The New Yorker, where she would soon become that magazine's first female publisher. [kickout id="1"] When she finally returned to her native South Carolina in 2004, Darwin brought her publishing experience with her. Working with Pierre Manigault, chairman of the Evening Post Publishing Company, Darwin started sporting and lifestyle mag Garden & Gun in 2007. But as any student of recent economic history could tell you—the timing was unfortunate. With the recession hitting less than a year into the magazine's run, and the Post Publishing Company ready to offload the title, it looked like Garden & Gun wasn't going to make it. Refusing to give up on the magazine, Darwin went independent with the title, retaining Manigault as a partner. With a devoted cadre of staff that stayed on, despite being paid very little, the magazine managed to make it past the recession and thrive. Darwin recalls just how fragile a time it was. "We had to skip an issue [and] I wrote a letter in the next issue and explained to the readers why I had to make this decision: we either skipped an issue and re-grouped or we shut off the lights and left. And I think that letter made such a difference and such an impact on our readership. People mention it to me all the time and they feel like we were honest with them and that our editorial pages are honest. So they just have this tremendous respect and trust for what we do." Darwin spoke with FishbowlNY about breaking into the boys' club at The New Yorker, how Garden & Gun was able to persevere and why the pub's name is here to stay. FBNY: Your first publishing industry job after moving to New York was in the GQ promotions department. How did you transition to The New Yorker? Darwin: GQ was part of Condé Nast and owned by Si Newhouse, and when he purchased The New Yorker, I was asked to go over with Steve Florio who was [GQ's] publisher. I went over as the marketing director and then was kind of given this carrot. If we could turn business around—because The New Yorker at that point had been in decline for a number of years—I would be made the publisher. I did, and so I became the first female publisher of The New Yorker. It was really an amazing thing because The New Yorker is such a legendary magazine, and to have been given that challenge and then to have such a big responsibility—not only to lead the team, but to honor the tradition of what The New Yorker was all about. It was just an amazing experience. FBNY: As the first female publisher, you had this "breaking into the boys' club" experience at the age of only 34. How has this shaped your career? Darwin: Well, even back at GQ when I was selling advertising, there were very few women on the sales team, and I think if you looked today it's probably completely flip-flopped in terms of the number of women that are on sales teams versus men. It was a boys' club and I guess I did break through, but I never really thought about it that way. I always thought, 'What can I personally do? What's my best?' And not comparing myself really to a man or woman, but 'How can I be the best at this job?' I do think things have certainly changed, although probably in some ways they're still the same. FBNY: When you acquired Garden & Gun as an independent co-owner, did you feel you had the freedom to do things you couldn't do at a larger media company? Darwin: Even though [the Evening Post Publishing Company] is a large media company in that it owns a lot of fairly small newspapers and television stations, magazines were not its world. When I wrote the business plan, [the intent] was to create a magazine division within the company for them. And then, when the economy was so bad and they felt they just really need to focus on their core businesses, they let me know they were going to have to pull the plug. And so I went to the chairman of the board of The Evening Post and said, you know, 'We can't let this thing go. It's too good. I know times are tough, but I feel like we've made this connection with these readers. Everything is kind of poised, we're winning awards. Let's see if we can't buy this thing ourselves and tough it out.' So he and I bought it and then we ultimately brought in a third partner a couple of years later. It didn't change that much from that experience, but I can certainly talk about how it's very different than when I worked with a Condé Nast or a Time Inc., which were wonderful, wonderful companies, but this is different. It's entrepreneurial. In some ways we're just able to be more nimble. I don't have layers of bureaucracy when I want to do something. I either make the decision or I discuss it with my partners. When we started [the Garden & Gun Club], we had a meeting, we decided we were going to do it, and we announced it in the next issue of the magazine. We didn't call in consultants and we didn't research it. We just went with our gut. And I hope we don't ever lose that here. FBNY: Speaking of the initiatives you've implemented, such as the club and G&G Store, what was the goal for these projects? Darwin: The club started at a time when things were very, very difficult. I wanted to find a way to be more in touch with [readers], but it turned out to be a nice vehicle to help with cash when cash was lacking. The highest level was what we called The Secret Society and it was a $500 membership to get a subscription to the magazine, but then have access to special invitations to really wonderful events we did around the country. And we had [a] real outpouring of readers who were willing to pay $500 for this membership. To this day, I'm friends with many of those people. [As for the store], we've got all of these amazing Southern craftsmen and Southern products that we thought people would love to have more access to, not only in the South but nationally. And so we started the online store and it has just grown and grown. We also do an annual event in the first week of December called Jubilee, an event where we are selling a lot of these made-in-the-South products. We're actually now exploring a bricks-and-mortar retail venture. The whole retail thing has evolved. The reality is we don't necessarily do them [to make money]. We only do six issues a year, and a lot of these initiatives are ways to stay connected with [readers] when there isn't a magazine sitting in the mailbox or on the newsstand. It all is to really build up the brand. We're, at the end of the day, a pretty old-fashioned magazine. The bulk of our revenues still come very much from print advertising and from circulation, so those other things are really kind of icing on the cake. FBNY: In a New York Times article from a few years ago, you mentioned that one of the things you liked about the name of Garden & Gun was that it was bold, but you were later thinking of possibly changing it to G&G. What would prompt the name change? And by bold did you mean provocative? Darwin: I would never change the name Garden & Gun. It certainly can be provocative, and I like that about it. I think that a lot of other names we could have come up with would have been pretty boring and we might not be around [today]. But what I meant was, around here, we call it G&G a lot. And I hear people say something is 'very G&G,' kind of like GQ being Gentleman's Quarterly originally. The "garden" and the "gun" are really just metaphors for the land and for the sporting life, which is a lot of what the magazine is about. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Fishbowl

Fishbowl Five: Garden & Gun's Rebecca Wesson Darwin

Garden & Gun's CEO talks about how she pulled a fledgling magazine through the recession.

Corinne Grinapol

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Corinne Grinapol