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building block in my appreciation of family, friends, and career. At Skidmore it was as cool to be smart and creative as I’m sure it is today.”

ratifed to have been selected for ard. “My frst reaction is that I am to spread the word about what I continue to get out the message hen you have cancer, you are not —there is a community g to embrace you.”

e Vineyard Vines catalog says it o young men dive off a sailboat n-splashed waters off Martha’s rd, wearing swim trunks oned with the company’s island-designs. Images of vacation-themed preppy apparel and accessories for men, women, and children are interspersed with photos of customers sporting their favorite Vineyard Vines gear and sharing their personal stories of living the good life, embodying the promise of the company’s tagline, “Every day should feel this good.” By any measure, the company’s co-founder and CEO Shep Murray ’93 , has achieved the American dream. Taking in more than $100 million in retail store and online sales last year, boasting licensing agreements with the likes of Major League Baseball, and serving a huge cadre of devoted customers nationwide (over 432,000 Facebook likes at last count), Vineyard Vines was named the “offcial style” of the Kentucky Derby in 2011. No wonder Shep and his brother Ian, the company’s co-founder, were profled as part of Entrepreneur magazine’s “Hot 500” list of America’s fastest-growing businesses in 2007. The accolades haven’t stopped since.

But the Connecticut natives did not always enjoy the limelight. They’ve come a long way from the day they started the business in 1998 selling handmade silk ties out of the back of a Jeep on Martha’s Vineyard. The story of how their entrepreneurial journey began is frmly entrenched in company lore and is a case study in how hard work, staying true to what you love, and thinking outside the box can transform the most fedgling and unlikely enterprise into a major American success story.

One important stop on that journey for Shep Murray was his time at Skidmore College. A talented singer and guitar player, Shep arrived on campus with plans to major in music, but found that he loved literature courses and considered switching his major to English before fnally settling on business. He recalls the introductory course BU107 as a seminal experience. “It gave students the chance to work together as a team and come up with a solution for a real company. That’s exactly what you do in the business world. It gave me the opportunity to roll up my sleeves and think outside the box.”

That opportunity would bear fruit just a few years later. In 1997, both Shep and Ian were working for Manhattan advertising agencies and hating it, particularly having to wear the dull corporate uniform of suit and tie—most especially, the tie. The brothers, who had summered on Martha’s Vineyard since childhood, also dreamed of spending more time there. That summer, they conceived a solution to their dilemma: creating and selling handmade silk ties that signifed the “good life” they enjoyed on the Vineyard, ties that young professionals would fnd fashionable and