When in Need, Rent a Preppie

The runaway success of The Official Preppy Handbook (more than 1 million copies sold) proved that the American preppie is a marketable commodity. Now three young men from the suburbs around Louisville are turning the prep school image into a profitable business.

Michael Raus, Jonathan Osier and Byron Burge, who finished private school in the Louisville area in June, faced the prospect of an endless summer without a job before they entered college. The trio then decided to exploit their preppie cachet. They assembled about 25 well-scrubbed young men and women to do odd jobs in the well-heeled area and called their new enterprise Preps for Rent. The basic company uniform: Lacoste shirts, Top Siders and khaki pants or shorts. For $7 an hour, this upper-class job corps mows lawns, serves drinks and paints houses.

At least one client complains that untrained high school graduates are not worth $7 an hour, which is more than double the $3.35 minimum hourly wage. But other customers are more worried about those uniforms. "The first thing I thought was that I hope they don't get paint on the expensive Izod shirts," says Mary Remmers, who hired the prep corps to do some painting. "I'd tell my own children to wear something scroungy."

The preppie gimmick is working. In July the newly incorporated outfit did $3,000 worth of business, nearly triple the amount in June, and August looks even better. Osler's older brother, an attorney, is conducting a trademark search, seeking to protect the name, and the trio has hired two more preppies to run the company while they are studying next year. Osler says that they may even franchise the business. So far, the only setback for Preps for Rent was when a local bank refused to allow them to print an alligator on their checks.

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