“And what is your situation in life?”
“I’m a recent college graduate with a degree in business.
We moved to Salt Lake City to start a formal wear rental business.”
“Such as dinner jackets and tuxedos?” she asked.
“That’s right,” I said.
She took mental note of this and nodded approvingly.
THE CHRISTMAS BOX
IALWAYS HAD A JOB. They were usually temporary positions, something along the line of collecting shopping carts at the local Woolworth’s for a nickel apiece or cleaning movie theaters. One summer I painted house numbers on curbs. My first real job with a time clock was at a Taco Time. I wore a paper cap and shoveled soybean-laced taco meat into taco shells passed along a rail. A few years later I moved up the pay scale, first as a dishwasher at Italian Village Restaurant, then again as a busboy at an upscale French restaurant called La Caille. Then, during my senior year of high school, a friend told me there was an opening at Tuxedo Junction, the formal-wear shop where he worked. The pay was low, but working with formal wear was a lot cooler than washing dishes or busing tables. And there were perks—free tuxedos for the proms. It was too good to pass up.
Two brothers, Gordon and Eldon Fletcher, owned the business. They were good men, as were my coworkers, and Tuxedo Junction became my home away from home.
I graduated from high school, was voted by my class “the most likely to die saving hostages” (don’t ask; I don’t know) and enrolled at the University of Utah. I kept my job at Tuxedo Junction, though I changed my hours to reflect my new schedule, working weekends and evenings.
One Saturday I noticed Gordon Fletcher lowering a large box through a trapdoor in the floor. I asked him what he was doing.
“Getting rid of another line of suits,” he said.
I learned that the basement was filled with worn and outdated tuxedos and their accessories—ruffled shirts, dickies and cummerbunds—which they planned to store until they got around to throwing them out. I asked if I could sell them instead. The Fletchers didn’t know why anyone would buy them, but deciding that they needed to clear them out of the basement eventually, they told me that if we cleaned out the basement on our own time, we workers could keep half of what we brought in from selling the tuxedos.
I spent the rest of the day devising strategies for selling the used suits. I created my first advertising campaign. I called it Tuxmania. For a week I ran tiny teaser ads in the local Pennysavers and in the classifieds section of the University of Utah newspaper.
Q. What’s bigger, Tuxmania or a James Watt protest rally?
A. The rally.
To the woman I met at the Union cafeteria last Thursday. I’ll meet you at Tuxmania.
—The Mannequin
A week later I spelled out the details of the sale.
Tuxmania, Utah’s only used tuxedo sale.
Coats, pants, ruffled shirts and ties.
Tuxedo Junction. 3300 South 1200 East.
The store went nuts. We sold the old suits to high school drama departments, costume companies, college students, even the homeless.
The entire advertising campaign cost me less than forty dollars, and in the end we brought in more than sixteen thousand dollars in sales. It also made me a hero with my coworkers, for we pocketed close to two thousand dollars apiece, and I got a steak dinner from the owners. I paid off my car, a ’69 Ford Fairlane, and saved the rest.
