Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
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fun, it was how we did it. We love to play guitar, we love boats, so we said, Let's sell as if we are promoting a band or a boat-building company and create energy and excitement around this really boring product." The two brothers clearly get along well, sharing an office and frequently interrupt- ing to finish each other's sentence. As befits an older brother, Shep, 41, is bigger and more outspoken, while Ian, 37, is quieter and more introspective. But both share passions for boats, music, and drinks on the dock. The first Vineyard Vines store, in Edgartown T he Murrays grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, just five miles where their headquarters from is now located. Shep grabs a black-and-white photo of their old house and points to a wooden carving of a whale made by their father, Stanley, on Martha's Vineyard. Stanley Murray went to the Vineyard every year as a child, and carried on the tradition with his own family. "We always said we spent nine months of our year waiting for three months to live," says Shep. In reality, the Murray children were exposed to excitement year-round; their parents were writers for Robb Report and took them to Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean at a young age. The brothers absorbed the lessons of customer service without to be in a hurry to put on a suit after college, both brothers landed desk jobs in New York in the late 1990s. "We'd find ourselves on the train platform in the morning wearing these suits, feeling miserable, and staring at other guys who seemed miserable and who looked like they had been doing it their whole lives," says Ian. Searching for an exit strategy, Shep and Ian came up with the unlikely notion of selling neckties. For Christmas, Shep had received a tie from his mother with icons of Nantucket created by a local art- ist. "The idea was so cool, but the execution wasn't," he says. "It was done on poor-quality fabric, and the scale of the icons was too large." Still, he thought, if the average executive couldn't be f ly- fishing on a Monday, "Wouldn't it be great for people to bring the Vineyard to work with them?" Most neckties sold on the Vineyard were polyester club ties, priced around Vineyard's ment $20—fitting with and reverse the reputation for understate- snobbery. But the Murrays sensed that summer islanders would opt for something of better quality for their workday returned home. Both brothers quit even knowing it—seeing how places could be enhanced or spoiled by the abilities or weaknesses of the people who ran them. "Staying at a property is not about it being a nice property," says Shep. "It's all the things that go along with it—the people make a brand come to life." The idea that people make the brand informs much of Vineyard Vines' market- style exudes help our customer live a nice life." — Shep Murray "Our clothes aren't supposed to impress; they're supposed to ing strategy. Instead of only using professional models in their catalogs, the brothers cull stylish men and women from the Vineyard Vines staff, or friends whose personal the sporty-summery "good life" approach to dressing. Ian pages through a catalog, pointing out the man who drives their launch in Edgartown, and a grizzled member of Jimmy Buffett's band fishing in the surf with white hair and a tan. "Any guy sitting at his desk in Midtown looking at him is going to say, 'What's wrong with my life?'" The brothers should know—they used to be those guys dreaming of breaking free of the corporate world. Despite their father's warning not The brothers admit they knew little about what they were doing. Over the years, they've had all kinds of fabrication and distribution mishaps, but they were lucky to hit upon a product that was easy to sell—ties take up little space, are one-size-fits-all, and have a high profit margin. The brothers' best asset was being able to project what their customers wanted, figuring if they liked an activity or a style, other men would too. their jobs and maxed out their credit cards, taking a page from the entrepreneurs on the next island over who had pioneered Nantucket Nectars by selling juice to boats in the harbor from their launch. While Shep stayed in the city making designs—Vine- yard street signs, an island silhouette, and a whale as an homage to their father's carvings—Ian drove around the island taking orders out of the back of his Jeep. The day before the company was officially to start selling, July 4, 1998, Ian had already presold $1,800 worth of ties. "That's when I realized this could work," he says. attire once they Neckties from the 2012 Kentucky Derby collection 100 bostoncommon-magazine.com photography by seth olenick (ties); courtesy of vineyard vines (store)