In at least one way, Sam Brenner was an unlikely choice to take over his father's tailoring business when he left the Farm with a degree in economics.
"I had one suit that I wore for four years at Stanford," Brenner recalls. "I was what you'd call 'Stanford rough.' I looked sloppy, dressed sloppy and was happy to be sloppy."
Brenner returned to his hometown of Tulsa, Okla., to help his mother run the family shop after his father died in 1950. Dishevelment turned out to be the least of his worries. Suddenly, Brenner, who admits that he still doesn't know how to sew a button, was overseeing a 20-person operation. "I honestly didn't know what to do when I started. But I was intrigued by taking over the family business."
Brenner proved to be a fast learner. Today, Brenner's Limited is the lone surviving original tenant of downtown Tulsa's Philtower Building. Sam's father, Louis Max Brenner, moved into the structure in 1928, about eight years after he started a custom-made clothing business upon his return from World War I. Since inheriting the store 57 years ago, Brenner has weathered the mechanization of the apparel industry and the onset of a more casual American culture.
The business probably would be unrecognizable to Brenner's father. Tailoring was an art in those days, Brenner says, complete with a team of drafters and cutters who would labor by hand to create clothing to a client's specifications. Nowadays, Brenner uses his knowledge of fabrics and style—sharpened since his days as a slovenly Stanford student—to custom-design suits and jackets for his patrons. Rather than crafting the clothing in-house, he sends customer measurements and fabric preferences to two American-based clothing manufacturers who rely on computers for more precise cuts. Brenner jokes that he runs a much smaller shop than his father did: "When the phone rings here, the president, sales clerk and janitor all reach to answer it."
Though he misses Stanford, which he calls "my first love," Brenner has few regrets about returning to the Midwest to take up the family trade. "It's been fun. You go through life and if you can't do things you really enjoy doing, it's kind of self-defeating. I've known guys who could hardly wait for their point of retirement. That's a shame. If you don't like what you're doing—whether it's as a vice president or a mid-level or lower-level employee—you've got problems."
TED BOSCIA, MA '07
