Just four months earlier, he had been hustling from one Philadelphia hair salon to the next, selling pound cake to women while they were being coiffed. Now Reuben Harley was reclining on a black leather couch in the midtown Manhattan recording studio of hip-hop mogul Sean (P. Diddy) Combs. The unlikely pair chatted about business, music and, most importantly, jerseys--the classic models that sports legends like Julius Erving, Nolan Ryan and Jackie Robinson used to wear.
Harley, then 27, was the new marketing director for Mitchell & Ness Nostalgia Co., which lovingly sewed and sold authentic replicas of old sports jerseys known as throwbacks. When Combs was shown some samples, he wanted to buy them. He also warmed to Harley, telling him "You remind me of Biggie," a.k.a. rap-music star Christopher Wallace, a Combs friend who was gunned down in 1997. Harley and his employer were instantly anointed.
Since that meeting 16 months ago, century-old Mitchell & Ness (M&N), originally a maker of golf and tennis equipment for the Philadelphia elite, has transformed itself into the nation's hottest marketer of clothing for urban black teens--and their eager imitators among suburban kids and dads of all races. Flip on MTV, Black Entertainment Television or an ESPN postgame press conference, and you're bound to see rapper Nelly in a bright orange Spirits of St. Louis jersey (the basketball team folded in 1976) or Tampa Bay Buccaneers football star Warren Sapp in a Kelly green, early 1980s Philadelphia Eagles getup. (Sapp wore a series of M&N throwbacks--which retail for $250 to $470--throughout Super Bowl week.) Lebron James, the nation's top high school basketball player, got suspended in late January for accepting two throwbacks as gifts. Boosted by such celebrity consumers, sales for family-owned M&N have jumped from $2.8 million in 2000 to $25 million last year, amid an otherwise dismal market for apparel. And the knits keep coming: sales so far in 2003 are running twice as high as they were during the same period last year.
What's the big attraction? "The materials, the colors are just a little different, a little special," says rapper Fabolous, whose album Street Dreams debuted at No. 3 in March and includes a track, Throwback, dedicated to M&N. Fabolous adds, "If I wear a Dr. J jersey at a show in Philly or a Jerry West joint in L.A., I know the crowd will go crazy."
M&N's success has inspired big players like Nike and Reebok--and smaller wholesalers like G-III, based in New York City, and Majestic, of Bangor, Pa.--to produce their own throwbacks. Pro-sports leagues now regularly outfit teams in retro gear during games just for kicks. Moreover, M&N joins the ranks of firms--from Louis Roederer champagne (maker of Cristal) to Timberland boots--that have flourished once an urban, largely African-American audience embraced them. But more than any of these crossover brands, M&N has triumphed because of a single unlikely hero. "I consider it a miracle that Reuben fell into my lap. He deserves all the credit," says company owner Peter Capolino, 58, a pale, bespectacled Barry Manilow fan who now chums around with Jay-Z, Shaquille O'Neal and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.