Up from the dead for quirky Bust

'We had full-time jobs and kids and stuff and did Bust on the sides—weekends and nights,' she says. 'That was always our goal—to have Bust be our job.'

Up from the dead
for quirky Bust

Founders reviving women's title post-Razorfish

By Jeff Bercovici

    The year 2002 will be remembered as a time when a lot of magazines died.
    Here’s a story of one that's coming back to life.
    The magazine is Bust, the quirky women's magazine that aims to be everything that traditional women's magazines aren't: funny, controversial, silly, outrageous.
    Started as a tiny circulation ‘zine that barely came out twice a year, Bust got noticed and acquired in 2000 by Razorfish Studios, a division of the "digital solutions" web company Razorfish.
    With dot.com money lubricating the way, 2002 was to be the year of Bust. The plan was to take the magazine, which by then was coming out quarterly, up to 10-times-a-year frequency, giving it a real, continuous market presence.
    Then Razorfish Studios went belly-up, taking Bust with it.
    "We were pretty bummed out about that because we've been doing the magazine for eight years now," says Bust co-founder Laurie Henzel.
    Fortunately, Henzel and her business partner, Debbie Stoller, were able to negotiate to buy back the Bust trademark. In April, the two women, who are fond of theme issues, will publish a spring "Fight like a Girl" issue in honor of their ordeal.
    Problem solved?
    Not exactly.
    For one thing, while Bust's demise is widely reported, its Lazarus act has been less noted, meaning that many people, readers and advertisers included, still think that Bust is history.
    "Basically we’re in the process of letting subscribers know we're back," says Henzel. "A lot of people saw those articles [about Bust folding] and were like, 'What's going on?'"
    Adding to the problem is that Bust hasn't put out an issue since last summer, as Razorfish had put the magazine on hiatus pending the relaunch.
    Then there's the issue of money: They don't have any. Razorfish kept all the money from any subscriptions sold while it owned Bust.
    Henzel says that she and Stoller are determined to fulfill those subscriptions anyway, but that means a big cash crunch.
    One casualty is the plan to go 10-times-a-year, although Henzel is philosophical about that.
    "I think after Sept. 11 that idea wasn't going to work anyway," she says.
    It also means that Henzel and Stoller, who enjoyed the luxury of the staff of seven during their Razorfish days, are back to doing everything, from editing the magazine to selling advertising and subscriptions and soliciting investment, themselves.
    But despite the setbacks, Henzel says much that is good has come out of the Razorfish experience. For one thing, Bust was able to double its circulation to 100,000 and its frequency to quarterly.
    "Coming out four times a year really helped us grow. When it’s only two times a year, it’s pretty spotty."
    It also gave Stoller and her the opportunity to focus on magazine publishing full time, something they’d never been able to do before.
    "We had full-time jobs and kids and stuff and did Bust on the sides—weekends and nights," she says. "That was always our goal—to have Bust be our job."
    Henzel says her goal now is to wrap the spring issue so she and Stoller can concentrate on finding investors. That, too, is something that’s easier now than it would have been two years ago, she says.
    "People have a little bit of sympathy for us now."

-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.

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