Knight Ridder Newspapers (krt)
MIAMI While his two-month-old twins slept on a couch in the South Beach store with the wooden floors and antique furniture of a Caribbean home, Robert Marley played a DVD on a large flat screen TV and looked wistfully at the highlights of the adventurous life he led before he joined the ranks of South Florida small business owners. In one shot, he is standing on the seat of a motorcycle as it cruises through a street in Kingston, Jamaica, looking bored and regal with his hair in chest-length dreadlocks. In another shot, the now shorn Marley — who prefers to be called Robbie instead of Bob Marley Jr. — is riding a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle through a Miami street backward. “That’s all we did back then,” the 31-year-old said of his daredevil biker days. “We even went to competitions around the world.” Now it’s out with the old and in with the new for Robbie Marley. Sort of. He broke new ground last October by becoming the first person in his family to open a retail store, Vintage Marley, at 233 12th St. in Miami Beach. It specializes in clothes and accessories made cool or inspired by Robbie’s father, reggae legend Bob Marley. The store features everything from CDs, vinyl records and posters to T-shirts, sandals and designer clothes from his big sister Cedella’s Catch A Fire clothing line. Prices range from $1 for a Bob Marley button to $400 for a women’s leather jacket from Catch A Fire. He said the store looks like it will break even within a year, though “it will take a few more years for me to recoup my investment,” Marley said. Born in the Trenchtown section of Kingston, Jamaica, Marley said he lived most of his life in Miami and currently lives in Coral Gables, Fla., near most of his siblings. He dreamed up the store two years ago, he said, and financed it with part of the monthly stipend he receives from the proceeds of his family’s enterprises. An artist and poet, he scrutinized every detail in the store’s design, “like I was doing artwork.” Marley said he spent his twenties enjoying the fact that he could afford to never work for a living, thanks to revenue generated by his father’s still immensely popular music and celebrity. “I never wanted to have a boss,” he said. “I couldn’t handle the pressure.” He said he receives a discount from Zion Rootswear, Trenchtown Enterprises and Catch A Fire Clothing, his suppliers. It helps that, as one of Bob Marley’s legal heirs, he sits on the equivalent of a family board of directors. They decide, for example, if a company will receive a license to feature Bob Marley on its products and how long a license will last. He said each of the 12 heirs — the 11 siblings and step-mother Rita — hold equal votes and pay a royalty fee to Bob Marley Music, which manages the Bob Marley catalog and trademark, if they use Bob Marley’s name or likeness or a sample of his music or lyrics in individual businesses. “This is my effort to help the bigger picture,” he said. “It’s also my way to take a little of the bigger picture for myself.” Working so intimately with his father’s legacy is worth it, he said. “People always ask me what it feels like to be Bob Marley’s son,” he said. “I tell them, I don’t know. It’s the only way I know how to be.”