Live From NEMOA: Beau Ties Knots Up a Catalog Niche
Since mailing its first catalog in April 1993, Middlebury, VT-based Beau Ties Ltd. has grown from a retirement years diversion into a $2 million a year business.
The company produces about 1,100 bow ties per week in a 6,000 square foot facility, which also produces scarves, cravats, pocket squares, cummerbunds and vests. Silk is imported from Great Britain, Italy and the Orient.
Creative is handled in-house, and the catalog mails nine times per year. Beau Ties has 30 employees, six who are part time.
The Web currently accounts for about 40% of sales, said co-owners Bill Kenerson and Deb Venman, the married couple who founded the business. In a presentation to the New England Mail Order Association’s spring conference in Cambridge, MA last Friday, the duo entertained attendees with the story of how the company began.
Bow tie wearers are a minority, said Kenerson. He wears them because his grandfather did, and has noticed many men have similar reasons for donning the neckwear.
Venman, an attorney, joked that her husband “sweet talked” her into the business, saying it would be a nice diversion in their twilight years. He didn’t let on that he realized all along this had the potential to become a major enterprise.
After hiring a marketing consultant to evaluate the potential of the business, the couple had to start from scratch. They found an alterations business in Middlebury with several sewers on staff who could be trained to make the ties, purchased fabric in New York’s garment district, and dropped their first one-sheet mailing, offering eight designs. Initial fulfillment was handled by a textbook distributor who ran the operation out of a closet.
“We had the sense not to quit our day jobs,” said Venman, a fact which made sure there was always cash flow in the early years.
For several years, the business
