Her Business is in the Bag

Denise Dupre 'BO calls it "A shoe-in attache for working women." It's a special bag she designed, developed, and markets for career women who commute to work with two pairs of shoes. Typically this means a pair of running shoes (otherwise known as designer sneakers) for comfort, and business-like pumps for on-the-job style.

But ordinary bags, even oversized handbags, don't have a separate waterproof-lined section for shoes. And carrying that extra pair in a plastic shopping bag from the A&P does look tacky. Consequently a good many business women found that cash, cosmetics, the morning paper, last night's office work, and today's Guccis would rattle around together. Hence the multiple compartments of Dupre's innovation.

She got the idea one morning two years ago on the way to work in New York—with a hotel consulting firm. Shortly thereafter she quit her job, and moved to Boston. It took 14 prototypes and the help of an architect friend (Josiah Stevenson '80), plus extensive field testing and market research, to arrive at the attractive and serviceable Taiwan-made canvas model that she sells for $55. So far they're available only by mail and in the retail fashion shop (oddly enough called Dupre) that her sister Anni '83 operates in Boston's Faneuil Hall marketplace. A second store is scheduled to open soon in Hanover's Main Street Galleria.

Closing the loop on the business-oriented Dartmouth Dupres, Rosemary '82 is a law student at the University of Pittsburgh and has just opened a compact disc-stereo store. And although Michele '88 doesn't have her own store yet, it's safe to guess she'll fill in at the new Hanover outlet when it opens.

Did Dartmouth prepare Denise Dupre for entrepreneurship? You bet. "Liberal arts training really helped," says this economics major who then earned an M.B.A. in hotel management at Cornell. Oh, yes. When she's not thinking about the bag business Denise is an assistant professor at Boston University's School of Hotel and Restaurant Management.