For J. Peterman Co., the Coat Fit Perfectly

It all started with a duster--a long, simple riding coat that John Peterman purchased during a trip to Wyoming.

“I wore that coat and people wanted to buy it off my back,” said Peterman, the co-founder and president of the J. Peterman Co.

So he decided to give it a sell, and a decade later, the J. Peterman Co. is a big retailer known for its unique catalog filled with off-beat merchandise accompanied by poetic prose.

It’s that quirky style that landed the company a starring spot on the TV sitcom “Seinfeld,” a role that’s helped push the Lexington, Ky.-based company into the national spotlight.

The J. Peterman Co. didn’t start as a cataloger, but rather with a few ads for the duster that Peterman and partner Don Staley placed in the New Yorker magazine in 1987 for $3,000. That initial eight-page spread turned into a golden opportunity for the two, translating into 160 sales totaling about $29,000 and nearly depleting their stock.

By the fall of 1988, they had put out their first catalog, a black-and-white pamphlet with sketches of five products and dreamy copy alongside.

*

Consumers started to take note of J. Peterman and its offerings, intrigued by the romance and fantasy that went along with each piece of merchandise. And that interest kept growing, driving sales at the privately held company up to $70 million last year from $585,000 in 1987.

“Every item we sell has to have a story,” said Peterman, a soft-spoken man who dabbled in many careers--from minor-league baseball to marketing consulting--before finding success with the J. Peterman Co. “We send people all over the world to find these products . . . and the stories come back with them.”

“The idea is to see something that is interesting, viable, unique, hard to find,” said Peterman, who also does some globe-trotting himself. “There’s no shortage of ideas but a great shortage of people who can recognize ideas.”

After the merchandisers scour the globe for these unusual picks, the company chooses what will be reproduced for its catalog, which runs anywhere from 98 pages to 146 pages, depending on the season.

And with each piece--from the cotton Nantucket Sweater to its casual “Hanging Out” wear--a story is told, with prose constructed by Staley, Peterman’s copywriter.

The collarless Irish Pub Shirt takes the reader to a 200-year-old pub on a Friday night. “World headquarters of conversation. Dark mahogany walls. Lean-faced men. Ruddy-faced women.”

The “My Favorite Kind of Female” jacket says it’s “Not too frilly. Graceful, without trying. Straightforward (but not without secrets).” And the Straordinaria seersucker summer dress is copied from one worn by a sultry woman dining at a cafe in Florence, Italy.

*

It’s the uniqueness of the catalog that caught the eye of “Seinfeld” producers, who created their own version of J. Peterman for the show--a dapper man who pontificates on his world travels.

While the show didn’t ask permission to use Peterman in its story line, the company isn’t balking at the free publicity that gets out to millions of viewers each week.

“It’s wonderful luck for J. Peterman that ‘Seinfeld’ decided to use it as a main part of its plot structure,” said Laura Ries, a marketing consultant at Ries & Ries in Great Neck, N.Y. “If it was an ordinary catalog, it would get brushed over. This shows giving your catalog a personality can be very powerful.”

“Seinfeld” executives declined several requests for an interview with the Associated Press.

Marketing experts say the “Seinfeld” role only reinforces the eccentric image of the company, which doesn’t advertise nationally.

“It’s a good match, and J. Peterman couldn’t pay to get that kind of publicity,” said Gita Johar, associate professor of marketing at Columbia Business School.

Peterman, however, doesn’t credit its growth solely to “Seinfeld” and the real J. Peterman isn’t so sure he loves how he’s portrayed on the show.

“They don’t know anything about me--they just kind of did it,” said Peterman, 55, who described himself as much less flamboyant than his television counterpart. But Peterman remained circumspect about what he’s really like and declined to be photographed for this story.

As it happens, TV’s J. Peterman went nuts this season and left Elaine, one of the show’s principal characters, in charge.

*

The catalog remains the core business for J. Peterman, using color sketches and an occasional photo to show everything from pigskin vests to fluted bottom dresses.

Prices are high. A short-sleeve polo shirt costs $48, a fleece sweatshirt, $78, a velvet dinner jacket, $350.

Last spring, it launched a second catalog, Peterman’s Eye, for home furnishings. It has an array of products from a one-handed pepper mill, $135, to a cowhide leather sofa, $2,995.

It’s also opened retail stores, with one already operating in Lexington and two outlets in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Manchester, Vt. Fifty more stores are planned over the next seven years.

“Clearly, people want things that make their lives the way they wish they were,” reads the opening page of the catalog.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Excerpts from the J. Peterman Co. Catalog:

WhitefishPoint Lighthouse lined, corduroy coat, $273:

Storm clouds were moving in. We crossed behind the summer house; made our way . . . towards the lighthouse. . . . “The Edmund Fitzgerald slipped to the bottom just out there,” she said, shading her eyes with delicate long fingers. I actually felt a chill, but she lowered her hand, and slipping her arm under mine, put the sap back into my veins.

Harriet and Lord Peter jacket, $285, and pleated skirt, $175:

They met in her cell in the Old Bailey. Had she fed arsenic to her lover? Had she? He proved her innocent. Met again in Oxford. (She wore this outfit.) He courted her; punting on the Cherwell, quail’s eggs, wit, an antique ivory chess set. Proposed in Latin: “Placetne?” Oh, yes. It pleased her.

Shocking rabbit fur hat, $245:

Shocking to see someone this young, this independent, so beautifully dressed. Shocking to find out she was not who she said she was. Shocking to see her walk off the QE2, into the arms of an unsuitable man, just an ordinary bounder. The other passengers couldn’t stop looking. At what she wore, how she wore it, the way they looked at each other, the way they still do.