A Wild Idea

by Jonathan Franklin

  —DOUG TOMPKINS

  Tompkins consolidated his vision and control of the company following the fire. An ad in the national press announced that Esprit was “Down but not Out.” Working around the clock in Doug and Susie’s living room, employees rebuilt shipping lists, reassured clients, and embraced the challenge as industry underdogs. One week after the fire, Esprit was shipping. “It was like the earthquake and fire of San Francisco for us, but disasters and calamities have a way of uniting people in a common cause,” said Tompkins. “It was a rallying point and people really responded to that and understood. . . . That was a company time of group spirit—esprit de corp, if you will.”

  After the fire Tompkins saw a chance to take full control of ownership and buy out the original partners, Schwartz, Dwelle, and Tise. It was a messy affair. “In order for me to get my equity, they made me release $375,000 in commission. They held it over my head,” said Schwartz, who owned 20 percent of the company and was head of sales. “I got screwed out of that. And I got screwed out of the whole company, period.”

  Doug and Susie forced out a founding partner, Jane “Plain Jane” Tise, the visionary whose lines of blouses and dresses led the company’s initial flair. After she reached a deal with Doug and Susie, “Jane had the greatest line about this whole thing that I ever heard,” Allen recalled. “She said, ‘After they get finished fucking everybody else, then it will be fun to watch them fuck each other.’”

  “Allen was expensive, he’d take clothes back all the time and that cost us,” retorted Bill Evans, an Esprit de Corp executive. “He was overpaid.”

  Schwartz disagreed. “I had contacts with every single department store and chain in the United States. I took that company from a dress company to eight different divisions, while this guy Tompkins was canoeing and mountain climbing.”

  Tompkins noticed that as soon as Jane left, Susie bloomed. “It was a huge psychological burden off of Susie,” he remarked, “because Jane was very domineering in her design ideas. And Susie was kind of intimidated and really didn’t go up against Jane’s ideas. But when Jane left, Susie took over the design direction and that was like a rebirth. She flourished. It became evident shortly thereafter that Susie, instead of Jane, was the real hidden talent.”

  As they rebuilt Esprit, Doug recognized his primary challenge was not to sell clothes. He was selling an image, fulfilling unconscious wants, designing dreams. Doug loved the challenge: understand the needs, pinpoint the cultural zeitgeist, market the product. Sales would follow. He was also clear about audiences that were of no interest to Esprit. “The yuppies are not our market segment,” he said. “They don’t have enough sense of humor. They’re too cutthroat to laugh at themselves.”

  By the late 1970s, Tompkins had presciently diagnosed the ’80s as an age of narcissism and pursuit of the good life. Esprit represented a Northern California–fit lifestyle that included gays, clusters of blond boys, and a burning sexuality bordering on a gleeful celebration of group sex. In a wild moment post-pill and pre-AIDS, Esprit become a cultural landmark for a lifestyle as utterly delicious and desirable as it was unattainable. The Esprit world was inhabited by blonde women wrapped in a style that indicated they were free, available, and healthy, akin to a vegan version of Baywatch.

  Working with ace furniture maker Sweeney, Doug envisioned the new Esprit de Corp offices as a showcase for design. Together the designed elegant desks, hand-crafted chairs, and lighting befitting an art gallery. When finished, the entrance to the new Esprit de Corp offices was breathtaking. The employee cafeteria was designed as chic as a snack bar at the MOMA, and what remained (after the fire) of his Amish quilt collection now hung on the walls, the width of each picture frame decided by Doug. “There were exercise classes. And you could go to cultural events,” said Dan Imhoff, an employee who became very close with Doug and eventually married his daughter Quincey. “Maybe you didn’t make quite as much money as you possibly could, but you were all in. There were these amazing parties and trips and you could go to Tahoe and ski for the weekend. It was like college meets work.”

  For Doug the goal was to be the best overall clothing company in America. He knew that Calvin Klein was more sexy and Liz Claiborne more profitable, but he thought of the clothing business as a kind of multisport proving ground where varied skills were needed. Esprit was not top in any one discipline but, as Doug bragged, “We’re good at data processing, we’re good in finance, we’re good in design, we’re good in image. Maybe we don’t have the best department in our industry in any one category but it’s #3 here, #5 there, and so forth. When it adds up, it comes out that maybe we average out to be the best.” He called the overall strategy his “decathlon concept.”

  Yvon was running Patagonia in a similar fashion down the coast in Ventura, California, where the company pioneered onsite childcare, used recycled paper for its catalogs, and donated millions to protect old-growth forests and fought against the damming of free-flowing rivers. Yvon and Malinda saw clear benefits to staffing their offices with long-haired surfers, hawk-loving secretaries, and a wild tribe of passionate outdoor adventurers. These were the people who would find a way when Patagonia boldly migrated from cotton produced with chemicals and insecticides to organically produced cotton. For a clothing company, it was a revolutionary gamble, and Patagonia’s success, plus its willingness to funnel donations to direct-action activists (including the legal defense of Earth First! leader Dave Foreman) gave the company deep credibility with a generation of up-and-coming environmental activists. A graduate student named Mark Capelli pushed a plan to save the steelhead in the Ventura River; Malinda and Yvon found room for Mark in the cramped offices and realized that having an environment officer spread the green message throughout the young staff.

  At both Patagonia and Esprit, many employees were self-confident individuals who might dye their hair blue one day and bring their dog to work the next. Like Paul Hawken, who created the gardening gear outfit Smith & Hawken, and Stewart Brand, founder of The Whole Earth Catalog, these men forged companies with the values of ’60s rebellion and counterculture. Led by lifelong rule breakers, these companies were nimble when opportunities arrived and unfazed when thumbing their nose at conventional wisdom, which they smugly decried as lazy thinking. While Silicon Valley tech companies later took credit for founding “the corporate campus,” it was Doug and Susie at Esprit and Malinda and Yvon at Patagonia Inc. who launched in-house organic salad bars, created a family-friendly workspace, and paid their workers to volunteer with AIDS patients.

  * * *

  I had no idea who he was. There was no internet, so there was no way to find out about him, so I didn’t bother. We sat down, and he got very belligerent right off the bat. “So, you’re this wise-guy designer I’ve heard so much about. You just rolled into town.” I said, “Okay, let’s get over that. What is it you want?” He told me the story of where they were with Esprit, he and his wife had this business, they were doing $10 million a year.

  The first assignment is that we went at the name Esprit de Corp. I said the name is too long. He said, “Yeah, we should just cut it down to Esprit.” He said, “How much time do you need to redesign it?” I said, about a month. I went off, put some thought into the whole thing, and came up with the three-bar E, developed an alphabet for him. This was for the transition of the other brands; at that time he had eight or nine brands. So, I go in, it was only him. It was very rare for me to make a presentation to only one person. Typically, it’s a board. He was very relaxed, and I made my presentation. He looked at me, and said, “This is it?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well, umm, I don’t think you worked hard enough. I think you need to go back and spend more time.” I said, “Really?”

  I gathered everything up. He said, “How much time do you need?” I said, “Gimme another month.” So, another month goes by. In the meantime, I do nothing. I didn’t touch it. I call him up, say, “I’m ready to be with you again.” He says, “Great.” I go into
his office, unravel the same presentation I had done a month earlier. He realized it instantly. He said, “What the fuck are you doing? I asked you to bring me some more ideas!” I said, “There is no other idea. This is it. You’re crazy if you don’t do this.” He was flabbergasted. He looked at me, and because he realized what was going down—he realized my ego was on the line—he realized I was absolutely certain. If he asked me to do it again, I would have said no. I would have said, “Get somebody else to do it.” And with a smile he said, “Well, if you’re wrong, I’m going to kill you.”

  —JOHN CASADO

  * * *

  In his quest for perfection, “Chairman Doug,” as some employees called him, searched worldwide for the ideal photographer to shoot his Esprit catalog. International photographers, including Roberto Carra, the head of graphic design for Vogue Milan, were brought in to prepare the imaging for Esprit. But leading fashion photographers, one after another, struck out. They battled with Doug over aesthetics and clashed with his ego. Tompkins enjoyed the conflict and, not surprisingly for a devotee of fencing, appeared to gear up for the next round of jousting. To recruit Oliviero Toscani, the son of a celebrated Italian photojournalist, Tompkins learned Italian. Toscani infused fashion with an editorial attitude. It was exactly what Tompkins was looking for.

  In January 1980, Tompkins and Toscani scheduled dates for the new catalog shoot. They wanted a new image, a new feel, an air of innovation for the ’80s. “He was kind of wandering around, and the question was in the air—Well, what are we going to shoot?” said Dwelle. “I suggested, ‘Let’s go in the conference room, and stay here until we can say, Why this catalog? What is it trying to say, and to whom?’ And we sat there for a couple of hours. Finally, Doug said, ‘What we’re trying to convey is not the product, but the collection, the look, the way of being.’”

  When Toscani agreed to work with Esprit de Corp, the bond with Doug was immediate, both in lifestyle and aesthetic taste. Oliviero was as ego driven and brash as Doug. Together they delighted in snubbing the fashion industry. At the top of the mountain as measured by market acceptance and street credibility, Esprit de Corp announced it would no longer hire professional models. Tompkins and Toscani created one of the first “real people” storytelling campaigns. Esprit de Corp employees, then customers, were recruited from stores around the world and featured in the company’s advertising campaigns with quirky phrases, including “I’m looking for a sensitive man who is also a sushi chef” and “There are two things about me that are small: my feet and my bladder.”

  “Toscani was very helpful in teaching me the craft of image making,” wrote Tompkins. “I got into that circle of people and started to learn the process and the discipline. The whole industry was looking at what we were doing. All great architects, designers, artists, brands, companies establish a style and change it with slow, careful modifications, always keeping all their customers following along with them. Lifestyle changes are slow; they do not jump from moment to moment.”

  The Esprit catalog shoot became an epic event. Thousands of customers lined up for the castings. Locations were scouted worldwide. “[Doug] had an inner power to him that reached out, and you felt like you were in the presence of somebody that had his fingers on a whole lot of things,” said Helie Robertson, the photo coordinator for the catalog. “He had good taste. Energy. He could climb up the side of Yosemite. He could commandeer a plane. He could drive fast and have fun. He made things happen.”

  Esprit grew famous as a maverick company, as the cutting edge of teen fashion. Job applications and fan mail poured in. When Esprit went to Stanford to recruit college seniors to consider a career at the company, they were flooded with applicants—from recruiters working for the other companies at the job fair! There was no doubt, Esprit had pizzazz. At a New York shoe show, Doug had his staff serving sushi to the crowds, while also talking up the company. “I’d rather have our people serving the sushi at a show in New York than a caterer. It’s more interesting. . . . They’re not learning to be waiters and waitresses, but they’re learning how to interact and impress our clients,” crowed Doug. “We’re showing that even our employees represent the lifestyle of the products that we make.”

  But the attention to tiny detail also led Esprit employees to wonder if Tompkins had lost his mind. When Tompkins needed a unique-sized napkin for Caffe Esprit, the restaurant he planned to open near the Esprit San Francisco outlet store, he dispatched an employee on a trip to investigate napkins. Eight months after embarking, the napkin researcher returned and Doug announced that his napkin, which he considered a work of art, would measure exactly sixteen inches by sixteen inches.

  The doggy bags at Caffe Esprit went through such a rigorous design and vetting process that they became an underground fashion sensation, as coveted accessories, and even used as trendy pocketbooks. Every sales slip carried a multicolored swirl created by Tamotsu Yagi, Doug’s favorite Japanese graphic artist and designer.

  The Esprit company newsletter was playful and published a weekly mixture of gossip, helpful tips, and satire. A tongue-in-cheek “Me Generation” column by Lee Rosenberg offered a lecture series for employees explaining “Guilt without Sex” plus special tips on “How to Convert Your Family Room into a Garage.”

  Esprit became so popular that market research companies identified the company as the definition of young, upwardly mobile, independent women. Marketers defined this new tribe as “Esprit Teens” and the suitors lined up. Helen Gurley Brown, the legendary editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine (circulation at the time three million copies a month), noticed the splash that was Esprit and made a face-to-face pitch for a share of the juicy advertising budget. She came to Doug, her heels held in her hands to protect his soft balsa wood floors—and gently urged an alliance. Tompkins mocked the Cosmo cover girls. “I find them sex-object types, flaunting their cleavage. They’ve got these phony-looking hairdos, and they’ve got a lot of makeup,” he told a stunned Gurley Brown. “That’s not the kind of image that I’d like to portray, so I don’t think that so many of our customers are reading that magazine.” Tompkins popped a mint into his mouth and concluded, “I guess it’s just a matter of taste.” Maureen Orth, who was in the room penning a profile of Tompkins for GQ, described Doug’s rule over Esprit as a “benign dictatorship” and “not everybody’s cup of ginseng.”

  Young Esprit employees, however, understood Tompkins and thrived at a workplace they called “Little Utopia” and “Camp Esprit.” Far from being aloof, Doug was approachable. “It comes down to the hard work, rolling up your sleeves, and being involved in the nitty gritty of daily action so you really know what’s going on,” said Doug. “All these guys who run large organizations become detached. Sort of like the President of the United States who seems so often to be detached from what’s happening on the streets.”

  Esprit also sought to build bridges into the local community. “Esprit had very good relations with the neighbors,” said Bill Evans, a manager at Esprit. “This was a warehouse building that was in a black, residential neighborhood, working-class people. Doug made a deal with all the people living nearby, and planted trees. Drew, the plant manager, took out a piece of the sidewalk, planted trees, and painted houses immediately adjacent to the Esprit building so they looked more presentable.”

  When a house near the Esprit offices burned to the ground, Tompkins leapt at the opportunity and bought the lot. First he razed the buildings, then the experiments began. The city lot was Doug’s oversized petri dish. How much park could he add to a single lot? Do you put in tire swings or a zip line? If pedestrians want to rest on a bench, won’t they also prefer shade?

  Two years later the park was completed with a fishpond and a picnic area. It was designed as a lunch spot for both Esprit employees and anyone from the street. On the other side of the Esprit offices, Tompkins bought the entire block, which had been a metal galvanizing yard. He removed the soil, because it was contaminated. And after bringi
ng in new soil, he flew to Oregon. In his plane he circled a farm with trees for sale—large, thirty-foot-high trees that required special flatbed trucks to transport the root-ball some 900 miles south. He bought several truckloads and thereby seeded his tiny urban nature escape with a jogging trail complete with redwood trees.

  Years before Google cofounder Sergey Brin was born in a Moscow public hospital, Doug and Susie Tompkins, the hippest of the hip in San Francisco, nourished a workplace so employee-centric that some called it a cult. In addition to free Italian classes, kayak excursions, and company-wide Halloween parties, Tompkins pressured his workers to leave town. To go away. To escape. “Frankly, I don’t want to underwrite anything that’s just a vacation,” he said. “Everybody can take a vacation lying on the beach in Hawaii, but how many people will really go rafting in the Himalayas? It’s a win-win situation. The individual will heighten their sensibilities about being alive, and if they are alive and more dynamic, the by-product goes to their organization.”

  “I was hired to be the liaison between the sales department and the design department because I had owned a pretty successful and hip boutique in San Francisco,” said Helie Robertson, who worked at Esprit for years. “They always made it real nice for you. There was a house with a swimming pool. You got all your food free. You would spend the whole day working. Then you’d eat out with everybody. On the weekends, you’d go do something fun. It was always a great atmosphere for making sure that you had fun time. They didn’t expect you to keep your head in the business the whole time, because I think they realized that it energized us to feed our outside interests.”

  Esprit intercompany sexual affairs were deemed inevitable, as employees from all levels of the company mixed and met at the Esprit tennis court, on the Esprit volleyball team, or sleeping at the Esprit chalet along the romantic wooded shore of Lake Tahoe. “I think Esprit was pleasant to us,” said Dwelle, who lost his wife in the sexual shuffle that was Esprit. “It was too much opportunity, too much success, too much money, too seductive. We lost track of each other and we lost track of our kids. You know, we lost track of anything except following those tracks. Neither of us did drugs, but it was like a drug.”