[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 63 (Thursday, April 11, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2426-S2427]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  RECOGNIZING VERMONT'S BEAU TIES LTD.

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, it is not often that I say the words 
``Vermont'' and ``bow tie'' in the same sentence, except, of course, 
when discussing the famed Beau Ties Ltd. of Vermont. Beau Ties, 
Vermont's sole bow tie manufacturer, got its start as a mom-and-pop 
operation more than 25 years ago and maintains that ethos. They are an 
amazing example of the many small businesses that are the heart and 
soul of Vermont.
  Beau Ties was started in 1993 by bow tie aficionado Bill Kenerson and 
his wife Deborah Venman. They ran the company out of their home and 
sold their bow ties through the mail. Over the years, the company has 
grown to employ 30 Vermonters and now has its own manufacturing 
facility in Middlebury. They sell hundreds of different bow ties, and 
their selection is constantly changing to keep customers coming back.
  Though they are no longer at the helm, Bill and Deborah's desire to 
keep the company in Vermont has been honored. In fact, the company has 
never left the facility that it moved into in 1999, and many of its 
employees have been with Beau Ties for over 20 years.
  Among its clientele, Beau Ties Ltd. can count the late Orville 
Redenbacher and Bill Nye. The company has also cut cloth for the Obama 
White House and is the official tiemaker of the U.S. House of 
Representatives and the Vermont Statehouse. I have also sported Beau 
Ties before: I wore one of their bow ties to the investiture of Judge 
Geoffrey Crawford, now chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the 
District of Vermont.
  I am proud to recognize the achievements and devoted following that 
Beau Ties Ltd. has accumulated over its nearly three decades in 
business. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a 
``Seven Days'' article titled, ``Middlebury's Beau Ties Collars the 
Market on Dapper Neckwear.'' It tells the story of Beau Ties Ltd., from 
its humble beginnings to now and of its importance to Vermont's economy 
and its many satisfied customers, myself included.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[[Page S2427]]

  


                               Seven Days

                            [March 6, 2019]


      Middlebury's Beau Ties Collars the Market on Dapper Neckwear

       Anyone who wears a bow tie is making a statement. It can be 
     ``I'm conservative,'' ``I'm in the wedding party,'' ``I'll be 
     your server this evening,'' or ``I'm intelligent and 
     dexterous enough to knot my own bow tie.'' Regardless of the 
     message, bow ties get noticed, as do the people who sport 
     them.
       Not everyone can pull one off--or tie one on. Those who 
     wear bow ties are a rarefied set. And for many bow tie 
     enthusiasts around the country, their bow tie mecca is Beau 
     Ties Ltd of Vermont: a modern, one-story manufacturing 
     facility in a Middlebury industrial park. There, bow tie 
     aficionados are occasionally seen getting their pictures 
     taken in front of the giant polka-dotted bow tie out front.
       Never heard of Beau Ties? That's unsurprising in Vermont, 
     where few people routinely wear ties of any kind. According 
     to Elizabeth Smith, copresident and CEO of Beau Ties, most of 
     the company's clients live out of state and buy their 
     products online or through their catalogs.
       But this predominantly retail business, now in its 26th 
     year, boasts an impressive clientele of famous bow tie-
     wearing blokes: the late popcorn entrepreneur Orville 
     Redenbacher, science educator Bill Nye ``The Science Guy'' 
     and retired ``CBS News Sunday Morning'' host Charles Osgood, 
     who has his own signature line of bow ties with the company.
       Beau Ties has also produced ties for the Obama White House, 
     Tiffany & Co., PBS, and countless colleges, prep schools and 
     fraternal organizations. It's also the official tie maker for 
     the U.S. House of Representatives and the Vermont Statehouse. 
     And its private-label clients include fine menswear retailers 
     Ben Silver, Barneys New York and Brooks Brothers.
       On a reporter's recent tour of the facility, Smith and 
     fellow copresident Cy Day Tall rarely referred to their 
     clientele as ``customers.'' Instead, they were ``our guys'' 
     or ``our fellas.'' While the bow tie market isn't huge, or 
     exclusively male, the people who purchase their bow ties, 
     neckties and other fashion accessories--cummerbunds, 
     cufflinks, suspenders, cravats, pocket squares--tend to 
     return time and again. Often they'll phone the company and 
     ask to speak to a specific employee who helped them in the 
     past.
       ``In our mind, we're a family business,'' explained Smith, 
     who splits management duties with Tall. Smith handles 
     customer service and sales, while Tall is the chief marketing 
     officer and ``wordsmith'' of the catalog, the mainstay of 
     their retail business.
       Beau Ties' familial feel extends to its staff, too. Of the 
     30 employees, several are mother-daughter or grandparent-
     grandchild pairs. Many, including Smith, have been with Beau 
     Ties 20 years or more. All but three are women. The company 
     also hires no seasonal help, Smith noted, so that everyone 
     can earn a decent wage with benefits.
       Notwithstanding its reputation for formal attire, Beau Ties 
     is actually a casual and relaxed workplace, where several 
     seamstresses were listening to music on headphones and joking 
     among themselves while sewing. Zooey, a small black pug, and 
     Margy, an energetic Welsh corgi, enthusiastically greeted a 
     visiting reporter.
       Beau Ties was founded in 1993 by Bill Kenerson and his 
     wife, Deborah Venman. Kenerson, a native of New Haven, Conn., 
     and a Marine Corps veteran who attended Yale University, 
     moved to Vermont in 1978 to buy the Killington Country 
     Resort. A year later he took a job at Simmonds Precision 
     Products in Vergennes, where he worked until 1990. In 1991, 
     then-governor Richard Snelling tapped him to serve as 
     commissioner of economic development.
       Though Kenerson had a strong business background, he had no 
     training in men's apparel, Smith said. But he was a dyed-in-
     the-wool bow tie aficionado who inherited many of his 
     favorites from his father and grandfather. Discouraged by the 
     dearth of quality ties he liked, he and Venman launched their 
     own bow tie business in the spring of 1993.
       Two months later, they hired Vivian LaFave, a New Haven 
     seamstress, who set up their shop in her basement and began 
     cutting and sewing ties from fabrics Kenerson and Venman 
     purchased in New York City's garment district. LaFave is 
     still with the company and considered the grand dame of 
     the sewing floor.
       Kenerson and Venman began by marketing just eight bow ties 
     via a one-page circular, which they mailed to 5,000 people; 
     it eventually evolved into a catalog. The company also 
     advertised in periodicals that Kenerson assumed would appeal 
     to fellow bow tie wearers, such as Smithsonian magazine and 
     the New Yorker.
       Smith remembers the surge of business that occurred the day 
     after Kenerson ran an ad on page two of the Wall Street 
     Journal in the late 1990s. ``We couldn't answer the phone 
     fast enough,'' she recalled.
       For several years, Kenerson and Venman ran the business out 
     of their home, said Smith. However, the company quickly 
     outgrew that space.
       ``Deb had to get up and get dressed every morning because 
     we had to go through their bedroom just to get to our 
     offices,'' she noted. In November 1999, Beau Ties moved into 
     its current building. Wanting to maintain the company's homey 
     feel, Kenerson had it outfitted with a large kitchen, an 
     outdoor deck, a grill and even a dog run.
       Soon, the company was producing 36- to 48-page catalogs 
     that featured nearly two dozen new ties per month, as well as 
     some ancillary products. The company's website also lists 
     another 500 to 600 bow ties, which come as pre-tied, clip-on 
     or ``freestyle,'' that is, DIY knots.
       Basically, the styles fall into two categories, Smith said: 
     the subdued patterns for ``the conservative fellows'' and the 
     loud, bold and bright colors for the more flamboyant 
     dressers. On the day of Seven Days' visit, seamstresses were 
     sewing plenty of green Celtic themes (for St. Patrick's Day), 
     hearts (for Valentine's Day), and purple, green and gold 
     masks (for Mardi Gras). Mostly, the fabrics come from China, 
     Italy and the UK, Smith said.
       It's worth noting that the ``Ltd'' in the company name 
     isn't an aesthetic flourish but reflects the time-sensitive 
     availability of its products.
       ``Bill and Deb's concept was to be limited, so that people 
     come back,'' Smith explained. ``I have to have something 
     [new] to entice them to buy from me every month.''
       Beau Ties continued to grow throughout the 2000s. By 
     September 2012, however, Kenerson, who was facing significant 
     health challenges, sold the company to its current owners: 
     David Kramer, who lives in New York State, and David Mutter, 
     in California. Though other buyers approached him, Smith 
     said, Kenerson insisted on finding people who would keep the 
     company in Vermont and run it the same way he and his wife 
     had.
       ``This was Bill's baby,'' Smith added. ``Every single 
     person who worked here was completely valuable to him.'' As 
     she noted, Kenerson opened every piece of mail that came in 
     and usually answered customers himself. A mere two months 
     after the sale, the ``Beau'' of Beau Ties died at the age of 
     81.
       Though one might assume that the typical Beau Ties customer 
     is a stodgy, Barry Goldwater-era conservative, Smith said 
     that members of the younger generation also want to fashion 
     one on.
       Representative of the new demographic is 21-year-old Andrew 
     Brown of Bristol, who's been working at Beau Ties since he 
     was 17. His grandmother, Barb, works there, too. The younger 
     Brown, a dapper youth who sports a bow tie daily, is now the 
     company's social media manager.
       ``The bow tie wearer is the musician. He's the architect. 
     He's the fella who works in a museum,'' Smith said. ``He's 
     the attorney and the judge. He's the young guy who wants to 
     wear something on `bow tie Friday.' He's the preppy kid who 
     wants something to wear to the yacht club.''
       Doctors and other health care professionals tend to prefer 
     bow ties, too. Why? The short ties don't drape onto their 
     patients and spread germs, Smith explained. Pediatricians 
     like them because babies and toddlers can't grab them. In 
     fact, Burlington pediatrician Joe Hagan belongs to a 
     professional group of docs from around the country called the 
     Pediatric Travel Club, which gets its neckwear from Beau 
     Ties.
       Tall, who names all the ties and writes the product 
     descriptions, said that, when Beau Ties first started, there 
     were maybe five other bow tie manufacturers in the United 
     States. Today, there are more than 50. To remain competitive, 
     she said, Beau Ties keeps its prices in the $45 to $49 range, 
     though some higher-end ties cost as much as $75.
       Beau Ties is unique in another respect, Smith added: It 
     accepts old neckties from customers who want them converted 
     into bow ties. Such ``one-off'' special orders are yet 
     another way to maintain customer loyalty.
       ``Some guys will send in a hundred of them,'' Smith added. 
     ``We make an awful lot of custom ties here.''
       Like other industries, Beau Ties enjoys great benefits and 
     faces challenges from being in the Green Mountain State. Its 
     location far from its customer base increases the cost of 
     shipping. For years, the company printed its catalogs on the 
     East Coast until, as Tall put it, distribution costs became 
     ``exquisitely painful.''
       At the same time, Tall noted, ``Vermont always has a 
     certain cachet, and we certainly play that up in every letter 
     we write.''
       ``The core of this place is the manufacturing,'' Smith 
     added. ``I don't mean to sound schmaltzy, but I'm the one who 
     goes out into the world to sell this stuff, and I'm always so 
     proud. I never have a product that I don't think is amazing. 
     And how fortunate am I? I get to see it get made every day.''

  (At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered 
to be printed in the Record.)

                          ____________________