Ralph Lauren Gets the Credit, But It Was the Other Guy Who Created Polo

A story of chutzpah, and finding the entreprenurial yin to your yang.

Ralph Lauren was not born Ralph Lauren. He was born Ralph Lifshitz, a housepainter's son from the Bronx, and by his twenties he was doing what a lot of us do: selling other people's stuff.

Gloves. Suits. Shoes.

He landed at a necktie maker named Abe Rivetz and, in 1967, pitched his boss on an idea: Wider ties. Bolder. More color than anyone in menswear was doing at the time.

You know, very 1960’s kinda stuff.

But Rivetz said no, and not a soft no, either: “The world is not ready for Ralph Lauren,” he told him.

(Bad bosses - the birth of many an entrepreneur, including yours truly.)

Selling From a Drawer

Lauren did not argue. He just went and found someone else who would say yes, a clothier called Beau Brummell, and made his ties there instead.

Now hear this: Ralph Lauren had zero design training. 

“I didn’t know how to make a tie,” he said later. “What did I know? I knew that I was a salesman. That I was honest. And that all I wanted was quality.”

He worked out of a single drawer in a showroom in the Empire State Building. A drawer. And from that one drawer came the one order that mattered: 1,200 ties from a Neiman Marcus buyer, which he delivered himself.

In 1968 he and his brother Jerry formed Polo Fashions, backed by $50,000 from a manufacturer named Norman Hilton. He called the line Polo because it sounded like the life he was selling, not just the shirt.

Bloomingdale’s Says Yes

Then came 1969, and Bloomingdale’s did something no department store had ever done for a designer: It gave Lauren his own boutique, built right into the store.

And every “designer shop” you have ever walked through inside a department store? That idea started here.

That’s Not the Real Breakthrough

Now here’s the interesting part.

By 1972, Lauren’s company had grown so fast - too fast - that it nearly went under. He had to put in $100,000 of his own money to keep it alive, and brought in a partner, Peter Strom, to fix it.

Strom righted the ship, figured out how to create Polo stores everywhere, invented Chaps, and stayed for over twenty years, Lauren himself put it best: Strom’s job was “to do all the things I didn’t want to do.”

The empire, it turns out, needed two people to build it, but only one name fit on the label.

Just like Martha

Martha Stewart had almost the identical arrangement.

Martha is the persona, the person most of us picture when we think of the brand. But it is Sharon Patrick, a former McKinsey consultant, who came in in 1993 and built the actual “game plan,” that turned Martha Stewart the entrepreneur into the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia global brand.

The Takeaway

Who is your Sharon, your Peter Strom?

Steal This Strategy

📖 Book - Genuine Authentic: The Real Life of Ralph Lauren by Michael Gross, the definitive unauthorized biography.

🎥 Video - HBO's official trailer for Very Ralph, the 2019 documentary that goes deeper into how the kid from the Bronx built the whole thing.

🌐 Website - Polo. Get your gear here!

About Steve

Steve Strauss is the best-selling author of The Small Business Bible (and 17 other books), Inc.’s small business columnist, a lawyer (non-practicing), and an entrepreneur. He sold his last venture, TheSelfEmployed.com to Mark Cuban & Zen Business. Need a ghostwriter or a newsletter for your business? Contact Steve!