Harold Wolfe ’80G

Our greatest accomplishment is that we get to work together,” says Bobby D’Angelo ’77. He and his brothers, Mark ’81, David ’82, and Steven ’87, are gathered around a conference table. The brothers, owners and executives of Twins Enterprises, have accomplished much, but their family bond is major league.

When they speak of UMass Amherst, the brothers, all business majors, smile as if sharing a secret. “It was a great four years,” Mark says. “I wish I could go back.” Bobby says, “When I first went to UMass and saw the towers, I said, ‘Oh, wow!’ By the time Stevie got there, he knew all the nooks and crannies, all the shortcuts.” They all laugh. “Yeah,” says David, “Stevie grew up fast.”

The college years were fun and also a lot of work. At that time, Twins Enterprises, named by their father, Arthur, and his brother, Henry (who passed away in 1987), was solely retail, a business built around the flagship souvenir store on Yawkey Way. Bobby says, “In those days we came home from school on weekends and worked Boston College football games at home, Red Sox at Fenway, Patriots games at Schaefer Stadium, and worked the Garden for Bruins and Celtic games.” David adds, “So we missed a lot of fall weekends—the best times at UMass.”

They were drawn to the Amherst campus because it was close to their jobs but not too close. BC and BU were options, but as David says, “We didn’t want to live in Boston because we’d done that. The UMass business program was a great education opportunity, as well as an opportunity to get back for work.” Steven adds, “All of us felt a financial responsibility. You had to ask yourself, ‘Why go to a private institution where the business school is not better than UMass and it’s going to cost four times the amount of money?’”

Arriving in Boston in 1938 in flight from Italy’s fascist government, Arthur and Henry D’Angelo were 12-year-old immigrants with only a few words of English between them. The twins hawked newspapers until one day they snuck into Fenway Park and discovered baseball. Soon they were peddling Red Sox pennants, and before too long they established their souvenir store and Twins Enterprises.

Bobby was the first D’Angelo to graduate college, after which he began to apply to graduate and law schools. But his father had an idea. “It wasn’t as if my father was saying, ‘Don’t go to law school.’ Our mother and father were not highly educated, but they are super, super intelligent. They understood how important education was, and they wanted us to just go for the moon. They wanted us to do whatever we wanted to do, but God forbid that you lay stagnant; that wouldn’t have worked.”

Arthur’s idea was more compelling than grad school: Why not take all the novelty items they were producing for the Red Sox and replicate those items for every major-league team in the U.S. “There was no major-league licensing in those days,” Bobby said. “Anyone could have done it. But we had the contacts and the know-how from Fenway, so that’s what started it.”

Arthur went out to find suppliers for the novelties, and Bobby went on the road. “I just got in my car and went to every single stadium in the country. I did it twice a year. Imagine being 21 years old, reporting to no one, going out, and driving the country. It was all virgin territory. We had no customers, so gaining a customer was like, ‘Oh, my God, I just sold this one.’ It was the greatest time in my life.”

Arthur’s forward thinking paid off. By the time major-league baseball woke up to the money to be gained from licensing, Twins Enterprises was well established throughout the country, and that’s how the wholesale operation began. And as each of the D’Angelo brothers joined the business, it expanded, with revenues growing for each of the last 30 years. Twins now holds licenses to produce caps for all of major-league baseball, nearly 300 colleges, and many other sports teams. Their “headwear” division sells an estimated 20 million units per year. Between their Dedham wholesale operation and their Boston retail facilities, they employ 260 people, many of them UMass Amherst grads.

As wholesalers in a high-volume business, they are an anomaly: “We’ve got the same cap suppliers we had over 30 years ago—which is really unheard of. We believe that you don’t sell your person out for a nickel or a dime. You talk with them, you work it out, and you end up with a win-win situation. We think that our relationships are a big part of our success.”

And what is the secret of their success in working together? “We all understand the concept of team, so it’s about winning the game,” David says. “It’s not about being MVP. We look at the components of the crew and ask, ‘How do we win? How do you get ahead and be number one?’ No one is bigger than the team.”

These teammates vacation together each year. This summer some 20 family members will gather in Italy to celebrate Arthur’s 80th birthday.

“Our father and his brother were perfect examples,” Bobby says. “We witnessed firsthand how two brothers could get along so spectacularly. We have our disagreements, but at the end of the day, ‘Okay, let’s go with your plan, and let’s move on.’ Our father and mother laid the foundation for us: Don’t be a jackass, don’t let money or ego get in the way, and just do the right thing.”