Houston Hall in the early 1980s was home to more than just study rooms and a cafe. It was also home to the first Steve and Barry's retail store.
Barry Prevor, a Wharton alumni who is the co-founder and co-chief executive officer of the retail chain Steve and Barry's, spoke to students yesterday at Steinberg-Dietrich Hall as part of the Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative speaker series.
Prevor spoke about growth and celebrity licensing as well as his humble beginnings selling T-shirts in flee markets during high school.
"When we had our booths at the flee market, we would climb on top of a van and yell and scream to the top of our lungs for people to buy our T-shirts," Prevor said as he mounted a table in the mid-sized lecture hall.
During Prevor's undergraduate career at Penn, the business broke out of its flee market roots into a storefront venue inside Houston Hall.
"Back then there was a place in Houston Hall for students to rent out stores. So this is where we sold our Penn T-shirts which cost students far less than the ones sold at the bookstore," Prevor explained. "It was a ridiculous success. We had to practice crowd control and only let people in three at a time."
After college, Prevor along with business partner and Tulane graduate Steven Shore opened the first Steve & Barry's store in 1985 which was located where Gia Pronto is today.
"We filled the store to capacity. Every sign said something, every hanger meant something. We used every penny to buy more fixtures and inventory," said Prevor.
The store expanded to college campuses across the U.S., but due to the increasing difficulty of obtaining licensing from colleges and pressure from local retailers in college towns, Steve and Barry's pursued mall venues.
"It was extremely difficult to get a space in malls. We caught a lucky break and were offered a store in a new mall in Michigan. . [The] owners were Michigan alumni who recognized our store on the Michigan campus," Prevor said.
Today Steve and Barry's has 260 stores in 37 states and offices in 13 different countries. With celebrity lines by Sarah Jessica Parker, Steve and Barry's is best known for creating diverse and affordable fashions associated with high-profile names.
The event was well-attended, attracting students from across the University.
"It was great to see how someone who went to school here believed in an idea and pushed it through to become something extremely successful," Wharton sophomore Raja Ghanta said.
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