The Buzz

Lexington’s own John Peterman was at New York University last week for a panel discussion with Roxanna Quimby, co-founder of Burt’s Bees, and Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, The New York Times said Sunday.

Peterman is the founder of The J. Peterman Co., and he, Quimby and Newmark are featured in a new book: Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands by David Vinjamuri.

“He is the man who built his mail-order business to $70 million dollars in sales and reinvented the catalog as we know it,” Vinjamuri writes about Peterman.

” He is also famous because of the buffoonish caricature of him played by John O’Hurley on Seinfeld starting in 1995. Four years later, Peterman went spectacularly bankrupt … And now he’s back, quietly rebuilding the empire he lost.”

What was the accident that gave Peterman his start?

He bought a long, canvas coat known as a cowboy duster at a store in Jackson Hole, Wyo. He got so many compliments that he started The J. Peterman Co. to sell dusters worldwide.

So began an accidental brand, “The J. Peterman Coat.”

The book is at stores and on the Web for $24.95 or less.

The duster is at jpeterman.com for $198.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Entrepreneurs. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.