Commonsense: How to Transform a Market
Arnaldo Anaya-Lucca, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Picture it: New York City, 1967. You're a successful tie salesman who dreams of revolutionizing the fashion world.
Do you…
Ditch the ties and apprentice to a big-name designer. After all, you have to start big to go big.
Stick with ties— it’s a solid market and one you know well.
Keep your day job and enroll in night school for fashion design.
If you chose B, congrats! You have the kind of common sense to be the next Ralph Lauren.
Commonsense is your ability to match the newness of your plan to the newness of your environment. In Lauren's case, the environment was not very new. Men bought ties. Lauren knew how to sell them.
In 1967, Lauren convinced his boss to let him create and sell his own line of ties. He made ties that he wanted to wear. Not the skinny ones that were en vogue at the time, but wider ties, throwbacks to looks worn by leading men in the classic movies that Lauren loved from the 1930s.
They were a hit.
Men who bought Lauren's ties needed shirts with lapels shaped specifically to frame them. Lauren responded by creating new men's shirts. Then they wanted jackets to suit the shirts. So on and so forth.
Before you knew it, we were all living in a Polo Ralph Lauren™ world.
(This documentary is a fun watch on Lauren's 85th birthday week).
