Bill Kennerson's Beau Ties

Vermont Business Magazine, Aug 01, 2004 by Marcel, Joyce

A few months ago, The New York Times ran a story claiming that bow ties are obsolete, especially for formal occasions. Their case in point was the last Academy Awards' show. The story angered Kenerson and he fought back. In a letter to the editor of the Style section, he defended his product: "Bow ties start conversations and even relationships. See if any woman within reaching distance can resist straightening one."

Not to call the Times a liar, but many men seem to be converting to bow ties. Kenerson regularly receives packages full of long ties with requests to convert them - a service his company happily supplies.

"Every day we get them in the mail," Kenerson said. "Some of them are lousy. They send dirty ties. So we now look at them first before we take them apart. We get some brand new ones, too. We know a Nordstrom's (Department Store) guy who sells menswear. When he finds a customer who wants bow ties, he'll sell them a regular tie and then send them up here to convert them. We got half a dozen ties the other day, and the average price of the tie - they still had the tags on them - was $130 each. And it's another $25 to convert it."

In response to Kenerson's letter to the Times, one of his clients, Jim Hazen of Las Vegas, sent him "The Top Ten Reasons to Wear a Bow Tie":

1) Winston Churchill.

2) You won't ever spill soup, sauce or red wine on your tic.

3) Beautiful women will flock around .to straighten your tie."

4) A bow tie points cheerfully, and twice, at the lovely world around us.

5) Your bow tie will never get caught in your lathe, coffee grinder or hedge trimmer.

6) You can five vicariously in Vermont, or feel right at home in Harvard Yard.

7) Your bow tie won't ever dip in the dishwasher, the gravy or the soup.

8) You'll stand out in a crowd.

9) You can see the pearly buttons on your shirt.

10) If you choose a bow tie, it will have a catchy name, like Happy Sophie Polka or Scotsdale, or Flirtation Black.

Early Years

Kenerson may look and act as if he was to the manor born, but his father was a state trooper in New Haven, CT, and his mother was a proofreader for The New Haven Register. He was the first in his family to go to college. As he likes to say, he "was born in New Haven, grew up in New Haven and went to school in New Haven." The school, of course, happened to be Yale.

Growing up, Kenerson had the usual teen-age jobs: mowing lawns, painting houses, and "praying for snow storms" so he could shovel walks.

"It was good hard labor," Kenerson said. "I bought comic books with the money, and some clothes. Not too many books. I didn't have a car until I graduated from college and my folks gave me their old '41 Pontiac."

Kenerson graduated from Yale in 1952 with a divisional major in psychology, sociology and economics. His career choice was personnel, or human resources.

"When people ask why a person goes into human resources, the answer most people give you is, 'I want to work with people'," Kenerson said. "That's not really what I wanted to do. It was a profession, if you will, that lets you participate in the company from the human side of the business. And over the years that I worked at it, I thought it was a very important part of the business. A business isn't very good if you don't have the right people and if you're not treating them right."