Up & Comer: An Addiction To Fashion

Buckhead boutique promotes style throughout life

by Mary Welch

April 2, 2009

N ikki Salk has an addiction. Actually, it's the name of her Buckhead boutique. "I just believe that if you are passionate about fashion and design, it like an addiction," she says. "It's not about cost, it's about translating that love of fashion and style into everything in your life, from what you wear, your accessories, your perfume, the books, the furniture. It spreads to every part of your life."

Salk moved to Atlanta from Chicago when her boyfriend was accepted into Emory University's School of Law. A graduate of the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago with a degree in fine arts in interior design, Salk worked as an interior designer but also managed a boutique in Chicago. As time went on, she became less interested in interior design and more interested in fashion and running a boutique. When she knew she was moving to Atlanta, she put in motion a plan to own her own boutique.

"Well, I knew I needed a good business plan, so I put one in place," she says. "I was 24 or 25, I had never done one before. I bought a software package that helped me. I was running a store, so I sort of knew the numbers, like sales and costs of things - the back end of things. I wasn't just pulling numbers out of the air. I did a ton of research, and it was hard work."

Armed with her business plan, she went to a bank for financing. No deal. "The bank said no, but I kept asking them why," she recalls. "My numbers were too high, so I went back and reworked them. I was asking a little bit more than I needed. Retail is such a finicky business that it's hard for banks to loan money to them."

Before she was able to go back to the bank with reworked numbers, her dad asked to see her business plan. "He looked it over and said it was on target, so my funding came from my family," she says. "It was a nice surprise."

With funding in place, Salk quickly set up shop in Atlanta. "I came to town and found a place and then had all my gears in motion. I knew which vendors I wanted to use; I went to New York and selected the clothes. Within a month to two months, I was ready to open."

Addiction had a "very, very" soft opening in the fall of 2007 with its official grand opening in March of last year. Salk is very definite about why Addiction differs from other boutiques. "The biggest thing is that I get labels and designers who may or may not be well-known, but no one else in Atlanta has them. There are so many stores that are saturated with the same brands. I don't want that."

Although she favors designers with different styles, she says her customers are mostly working women in their 30s and 40s as well as a "lot of ex-New Yorkers. My clothes are in the moment but aren't so trendy that they'll be out of style next year." She has tended to stock items that could easily go from work to evening but is adding more casual outfits.
 
She recently added a mobile service. She will go to a home or office and show a variety of clothes and accessories. She puts a form online for a potential customer to use to tell what she is looking for in an outfit, and Stalk will select several possibilities in the right size, complete with accessories.

"People are so busy that it makes life easier if we bring part of the boutique with us to the customer. Sometimes going into a store can be so overwhelming, especially if you are short on time. It's easier and more creative for us to do it. Plus, if we bring clothes to your home, you can see if they work with clothes you already have. We're seeing that in this economy people want to make sure that something new fits with what they have."

A year after opening Addiction, Salk is going back to her business plan to check how she's doing. "I want to study it to see what we've done right and wrong. Of course I didn't plan on the economy being the way it is. All I know is that I'm planning on opening a boutique in Chicago in the next year or so. And, every month we're more profitable than the month before - so I guess my plan's working."