At a time when young entrepreneurs are known more for designing apps, Akiva Jackson, 16, and Jack Sivan, 17, are going against the high-tech grain, using their hands to make 19th century formalwear. Their slogan is appropriately old-fashioned: “Bow ties for the discerning gentleman.”
Jackson and Sivan, who attend Gann Academy, a Jewish high school in Waltham, have sold only about 40 of their reversible ties so far, at $20 to $30 apiece. But they have tapped into a bow tie revival. Celebrities from pop star Justin Timberlake to soccer player David Beckham are sporting the quirky neckwear, and many bow tie companies have popped up in recent years, including several in Boston….
Jackson and Sivan, whose fathers are both MIT professors, are well aware that they are an anomaly among boys their age. Sivan designs costumes for school plays and will attend the Rhode Island School of Design next year to study fashion. Jackson plays violin, belongs to the school feminist club, rides a unicycle, and sometimes wears a top hat.
“I would be perfectly happy living in the 19th century,” said Jackson, laughing as he clarifies: “I mean 19th century in England as a rich, white, Christian scientist who goes on adventures.”
Their business model, however, is strictly 21st century, with multiple social media accounts, a sales platform on the craft site Etsy, and Google Analytics to track visitors to their website,jackandjacksons.com . They model their ties on tree trunks and Jackson’s chickens, which he keeps in a coop he and his mother built in their yard.
Jacob Pinnolis, Jackson’s faculty adviser and a customer, wasn’t surprised when his eclectic student got into bow ties. “It helps to have a little sense of whimsy,” Pinnolis said.
The boys want to expand to include neckties and hair bows. They are training friends to help build their inventory. Sivan, the more serious of the two, can see Jack & Jacksons one day occupying a warehouse. The shaggier and sillier Jackson views the business as more of a side project. Yet he keeps a detailed spreadsheet that calculates, among other things, the wage they would make if they paid themselves: $3.30 an hour. He notes that is 26 times the average Bangladeshi garment worker’s wage.
That pisses me off.
Jackson’s mother, Claudia Marbach, who teaches at Jewish Community Day School in Watertown, likes the boys’ worldly perspective, including the 10 percent of sales they donate to a charity devoted to stopping human trafficking.
Jackson has always had “serial interests,” said Marbach, as matzo balls boiled on the stove for a Friday night Shabbat dinner. Pokemon, owls, the Keystone XL pipeline. Bow ties are his latest….
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