“Never Heard of It.” In 1967, a young tie salesman walked into Bloomingdale’s. His résumé was a brief stint on the floor at Brooks Brothers. Bloomingdale’s was the most prestigious retailer in the country. The men’s buyer had a “million-dollar pencil,” meaning his signature was worth millions to a fashion house. The young man wanted that pencil. He asked the buyer to carry a new line of ties, exclusively. Why a new line? He didn’t have an old one. Selling ties isn’t anyone’s idea of a top-ten career, but he wasn’t choosy. He had talked a tie company called Beau Brummell into hiring him as a designer, and he worked out of a single drawer in the Empire State Building, delivering ties himself. The problem was that his ties were wider than anything on the market. The solution, as it would happen again and again, he knew what customers wanted before they did. He explained that to the buyer. Young men of the hippie era were looking for jobs. Or dates. Older guys wore golf pants and leisure suits. The buyer asked for his brand. He told him a story instead: photographs of 1930s polo players, with horses, brass and leather, and let’s not forget the riding crops. Young men wanted to dress like Cary Grant, but that look had gone out with homburgs and trilbys. He knew it because he’d been chasing it since he was a teenager in the Bronx, studying Fred Astaire and Cary Grant. He would make them look like aristocrats. “So what’s it called," they buyer asked impatiently? “Polo.” “Never heard of it,” the buyer said. “Just wait.” Bloomingdale’s asked him to make his ties narrower and drop his label. He took his ties and left. Months later, they came back on his terms. One more thing. He was born Ralph Lifshitz, in the Bronx, the son of immigrant parents. At sixteen, tired of being teased at school, he and his brother Jerry changed their name to Lauren. Their brother Lenny kept Lifshitz. Four takeaways 1) Sell what you can be, not what you are. 2) Name the future, not the past. 3) Know when to leave the table. 4) Expect a few dents along the way. Coda In 1971, with Norman Hilton’s backing, he launched his own company and opened the first freestanding store by an American designer, on Rodeo Drive. In 1977, Woody Allen dressed the cast of Annie Hall in Ralph Lauren clothing. Robert Benchley said there are two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t. I divide it into the ones Steve Jobs saluted in Apple's 1997 “Think Different” campaign: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers… Because they change things.”