In October 2001, Susan Botwick Murphy, BE '86, found herself in a pickle. Her relatively high-profile position as vice president of marketing at TMX Interactive could not save her from the plunging economy of post-Sept. 11.

The company laid off two-thirds of its staff, and, for the first time in her 15-year professional career, Murphy was out of a job.

Fortunately, Murphy's severance package provided a financial cushion, but with an admittedly "type A" personality, she says she knew she couldn't sit idly on her couch and watch TV. "I began thinking about what I wanted to do," she says.

Leftover fabric and a functioning sewing machine inspired Murphy to pick up an old hobby of sewing handbags that had earned her a few extra dollars in the past. But, she never dreamed of the enterprise that Viv Pickle handbags would become.

About three years earlier, a trendy purse in the Soho section of New York City had caught her eye. The purse's $150 price tag inspired Murphy to doodle its design and take a stab at creating her own designer merchandise.

Her handbag made its debut appearance in a hair salon, where her hairstylist admired the bag so much that she asked Murphy to make one for her by the next day for a trip to London. Murphy says she was unable to meet such a quick turnaround, but she was intrigued that her purse turned heads.

"I ended up selling her the bag right off my arm, and I walked out with all my stuff in a plastic bag," Murphy says.

Sewing handbags was not what she had envisioned as a career when she graduated from the University, Murphy says. In the intervening years, she had held increasingly responsible positions at a bank and Comcast Corp., later moving to the Electric Schoolhouse, what proved to be an unsuccessful Internet teaching company, before taking the TMX job.

However, her situation in October 2001 presented the perfect opportunity to continue a passion delayed, and Murphy began creating works of art in floral, Hawaiian and plaid prints, chenille, satin and silk.

"I sewed like crazy in my living room until all hours of the night," she says, confessing to 3 a.m. sewing sessions after waking up in a panic about her all-too-cloudy future.

Murphy chose to market her purses under the name Viv Pickle. The name originated during Murphy's days at Electric Schoolhouse, when the staff translated the "VP" of her title as vice president to Vivacious Pickle.

After a few successful and not-so-successful runs in craft shows in Philadelphia and Wilmington in November and December, Murphy's living room became so crowded with material and thread that she chose to rent a small studio space in Philadelphia.

Viv Pickle handbags started popping up in shops around the Philadelphia area as merchants agreed to display the popular merchandise. "Some shops agreed to sell my bags and others consigned," she says, "but the bags sold so well that my consignment relationships became wholesale relationships."

By December, however, Murphy started to worry about the longevity of her venture, since the end of the holiday season was quickly approaching.

Searching for answers, she turned to a mentor and former boss at Comcast who helped put some of her fears to rest. Murphy recalls him saying, "Any time you can do something that makes you smile, stick with it."

As fate would have it, she met a friend a week later, who agreed to help with the young business by inviting friends over to showcase Viv Pickle, much like a Tupperware party.

These extremely successful, informal gatherings became known as "Pickle Parties," where women can choose from more than 130 fabrics and eight designs for their own customized Viv Pickle masterpiece, at nearly half the price of Murphy's original Soho inspiration.

Murphy says Pickle Parties--originally spread by word-of-mouth--produce the bulk of her business. "At a craft show, I spent $75 just to get inside, and I only sold two bags," Murphy remembers. "The same night, I sold $1,000 worth of merchandise at a Pickle Party."

Since her first Pickle Party, Murphy says at least 150 more have brought similar results.

In August, she set up shop in Old City Philadelphia, where business is "growing like mad. Now, we're too busy to go to craft shows. We usually attend about 15 Pickle Parties per month," Murphy says. "The store is open five days per week, and we're always receiving phone and web orders."

Viv Pickle's success has been written about in such publications as Philadelphia Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News, Lucky Magazine and New York's Time-Out Magazine, as well as mentions on several Philadelphia-area television stations. Murphy attributes most of her national and international business to Wear Philadelphia, a travel magazine in hotels, which called Viv Pickle "Philadelphia's version of Kate Spade." "But, don't tell Kate Spade," she says.

"We've received orders from Texas, Missouri, Ohio and even from France," she says. "We're sending purses everywhere."

Murphy, who graduated with a double major in operations and marketing and an economics minor, had not imagined Viv Pickle's existence on graduation day, but she attributes some of the company's success to her time spent on campus.

"I own a customized handbag store. You tell us what you want and we make it," she says. "In marketing, the customer is number one, and if you make something that the customer can't get anywhere else and it's a good quality product, people will buy it. However, from an operations standpoint, it's much easier to manufacture the same bag over and over than a different bag every time, but fortunately, my educational background helped me with that."

Now, with a certain amount of success in her pocketbook, Murphy aspires to open stores in the greater New York and Boston areas before next year. She also plans to hire a full-time business coordinator to take over the day-to-day operations so she can spend more time fulfilling another passion--teaching.

An occasional guest speaker at UD and an adjunct professor two years ago, Murphy now teaches four sections of "Introduction to Operations Management" each semester as well as a Winter Session course. "I think the University is making a conscious effort to get more real-world experience in the curriculum," Murphy says, "and that's why they hired me."

She says her responsibilities as a full-time faculty member in UD's Lerner College of Business and Economics have been extremely rewarding.

Murphy, who integrates Viv Pickle and her business decisions into her lectures and assignments, says, "Six years from now, I would love to hear a student say, 'I remember when Miss Murphy said this or that.' To hear that I made an impact or made someone realize the significance of a lecture when in a similar life situation--that is when I will know I succeeded as a teacher."

--Stephanie Whalen, AS 2003