by Mel Ziegler
“Why do we have so much khaki in the line?” he wanted to know.
“Why aren’t we offering brighter colors?”
“Why don’t we have shirts with button-down collars?”
Soon, I was fielding his relentless why’s daily. For years, the ideas for new styles just flowed as if they were streamed in. Now Bob was running interference, distracting me from hearing the signal.
Granted, after years of autonomously planning, designing, analyzing sales, and deciding how much to order of each item, I wasn’t accustomed to being questioned about trends. I had already relinquished the time-consuming, and now overwhelming, analysis required to Bob’s supremely logical leadership, but it was no secret that he didn’t have a feel for the product. He pushed his team to find less expensive mills and factories, which added to our margin but sometimes compromised the quality.
One day Linda Umbell, the head women’s merchandiser, came to me with a production sample of an oversized women’s shirt. She had been enthusiastic about the original design and the rich colors but was now worried about the fit. She asked me to try it on. It wasn’t the fit that was the problem. It was that the fabric was stiffer than the finely woven cotton gauze I had designated. The new factory in Turkey, or Sri Lanka, with the lower prices had found a “close match,” but it wasn’t close enough to drape as well as the original, and so the shirt looked boxy and unflattering. Too late to reject, already in the catalogue, we were forced to accept several thousand disappointing shirts. This irked me, but I didn’t want to make an issue about one shirt when Bob was doing his best to fill the huge demand for new merchandise.
Data was Bob’s proxy for intuition. He put the store staff to work polling customers. What colors are you looking for that you don’t see in the store? How much do you want to pay for a pair of khakis? Do you think our skirts are long enough? For me, this was backward. If you ask most customers what they want and how much they will pay for it, they’ll tell you that they want what they have already seen and at a lower price. If you’re in business to copy and knock off others, data is your designer. Our customers wanted us to create, not copy what they could get somewhere else. They had demonstrated that they understood value. When they saw a well-designed piece in a high-quality fabric, they were willing to pay for it. Even if we’d gone Bob’s route and manufactured what customers when prompted might say they wanted, it would take six months for the styles to arrive in the stores. By then, it was just as likely that customers would want something else they’d just seen.
“And truck drivers? Are they our customers?” Bob asked, and had the stores poll customers on what they did for a living.
While I had at first welcomed his intellectual probings, I now found them exhausting and fruitless. I began to avoid our impromptu hallway discussions.
I didn’t agree with the Wall Street cynics either. Safari-inspired was not just a trend. It was the heritage of the company. Hermès had done fine as an equestrian-inspired line for more than a century; Polo’s polo ponies were still going strong. A subtle reference to safari would always be in our line (as was, for instance, sailing for Lands’ End and hunting for L.L.Bean), but we were evolving constantly. The travel focus had added even more dimension. Increasingly, the clothes reflected global influences. We planned to bring the theme of a different world region into each fall and spring line to support the featured travel journal as well as to keep the line fresh. Versions of a Thai sarong, batik shirt, and Burmese cloth satchel would be featured in the upcoming Southeast Asia journal catalogue. Wool sweaters and scarves with Navajo blanket patterns, Hopi basket-style purses, plaid flannel shirts, and concho belts would complement our khakis in a catalogue with a western wilderness theme.
While Mel and I saw this planned evolution as highlighting the new travel emphasis, this too made Bob nervous. By this time, the buys were huge: as many as 100,000 of a single short, requiring big, irreversible commitments, bringing us into uncharted territory. Why couldn’t we use a trend service to see if we were on track with fashion trends, Bob wanted to know, and focus groups to be double sure?
I should have realized that all the time he was spending at Gap since we had moved out of Bluxome Street had influenced his thinking. At Gap, the “merchants,” as they were called, reviewed ideas put forth by designers and told them what to make. If the merchants felt an item was missing, they’d direct the designers to create it. They reached and backed up their decisions with the help of color trend consultants, fashion trend consultants, and focus groups. In the end, in lieu of instinct, the corporate culture designed the clothes. This wasn’t, and never would be, our way, of course.
Our clothes were designed with input from the merchants, but design had the final say. I approved and signed off on every item we made.
Then one day, to my surprise, in a sample shipment from Italy, I spotted a leather and linen tote bag I had never seen before. It wasn’t a bad-looking bag; just nothing special about it. I thought it might have been a sample made for another company accidentally sent to us. I asked the head accessory buyer if he had any idea where it came from.
“Bob felt that everyone wants totes these days, so we should sell one too,” he said.
I went to find Bob. “Look,” I said, “there is nothing particularly wrong with this bag, except that it’s common. No details, no heritage, no character. If you feel strongly that we need an item to fill a certain category, come to me about it.”
“Why? You aren’t a real designer anyway,” he retorted. “After all, weren’t you an art major?”
Stunned by his surliness, I walked away.
The underlying problem we had with Bob was that he didn’t appear to see value in creativity. He was also oblivious of the demoralizing effect he had on creative people, and I suspect unaware as well of his generally downbeat demeanor. As time went on, it was becoming a problem.
What made matters worse is that the confirmation Bob did not get from us he soon found in a new ally. Mickey Drexler let Bob know he understood his concerns about Banana, and had a few ideas of his own. Banana Republic merchandise needed to have a wider range . . . be more accessible . . . more color . . . less “gimmicky” . . .
The attacks were surreal, particularly coming at a time when we had the strongest retail and catalogue numbers in the nation, and were winning all sorts of awards—including a Cutty Sark Menswear Award, and the Direct Marketing Association’s award for Best Catalogue. Later, Catalogue Age magazine even declared Banana Republic’s catalogue to be the “Best Catalogue of All Time.”
On October 19, 1987, with the company headquarters still split in two locations while new offices were being built, we decided to raise spirits by hosting a huge conference at the Claremont Hotel in Oakland. The district and store managers flew in from around the country to meet one another and the creative team. The four-day session focused on our mission, building camaraderie, and celebrating our top salespeople.
The conference could not have come at a better time, both for the company and for us. Mel and I, for the first time ever, had begun to have some doubts about our decision to sell to Gap. With Don’s scenario of the-sky’s-the-limit expansion, it was beginning to feel like growth for growth’s sake. Although we weren’t signing the leases ourselves, we were complicit in agreeing to them. Many highly desirable store locations, too good to pass up, presented themselves. By 1987 and into 1988, we were opening too many stores too fast. One day we found ourselves in a galleria that could have been Minneapolis or St. Louis or Houston, walking the upper level, passing one familiar high-end chain store after another. We looked down to the level below and saw the Banana Republic logo blinking in neon over a rusted old jeep. Yet another store we hadn’t yet seen, run by a manager we hadn’t yet met. We looked at each other, both thinking the same thing. How had we let this happen?
The conference brought us back. Feeling the energy of the employees, their excitement and sense of purpose, dispelled our sudden ambivalence. These
were smart, personable people. We were touched by how many thanked us and told us they had never before had an opportunity to work for a company as innovative, caring, and dynamic as Banana Republic. They were passionate about the company and their jobs. When people asked us if we had any kids, Mel and I liked to say, “No, not yet—except for three thousand of them.” Through the process of building the business, we’d somehow crossed over from being the kids we saw ourselves as to being “parents.” But now, after all these years, a carefully guarded secret: I was pregnant. Mel and I were both glowing with happiness. A baby we’d been trying to have for a long, long time.
On the first night at the Claremont, surrounded by several hundred of our managers, all of us inside a totally Banana Republic feel-good be-smart be-happy bubble, the conference finally broke for dinner. I went out to the lobby to stretch my legs. My eye caught the headline on the afternoon newspaper:
STOCKS PLUMMET 22%
PANIC ON WALL STREET
The world had changed while we were in the conference room.
Weirdly, Gap stock telegraphed the crash when, a few weeks earlier, it missed its estimated earnings and lost a third of its value before falling by half again on this October day that would forevermore be christened Black Monday.
The country was spooked. Over the next couple of months, for the first time in our nearly ten years of business, sales flattened. Holiday sales were not what we predicted. The all-important Wall Street comparable store gauge fell into even lower single digits, and our catalogue orders also slowed. The market crash had wiped out a massive amount of wealth, and consumers were spending less of their income on discretionary items such as clothing.
In early 1988, as Trips was going to press, Don Fisher called me, and even though we had discussed it on several occasions, asked, “Why are we publishing a magazine?”
His question, of course, was suggesting its own answer: he was intimating that the magazine was a distraction. I explained: the magazine added to the authenticity of the brand. We were a lifestyle business. Our customers were literate. The bookstore and the magazine were to serve the customers’ broader travel needs. Both also established our further authority in travel. Our clothing sales benefited from the association.
“We need to stick to what we know,” he said. “I’m not sure these things are a good idea.”
And then more from Bob: “How did you come up with the women’s fit? Why aren’t you ordering more of the yellow and less of the green? What does Rose [Patricia’s mother, who was now finding furnishings for our stores] do around here anyway? Have you guys seen what’s being worn in Paris?”
There was no longer any doubt that the Fishers weren’t happy.
I kept as much of it as I could from Patricia. She went into early labor and was placed on bed rest by our doctor. She worked from home with her design team, mapping out the fall line where production deadlines loomed, and relying heavily on her assistant Monica Pichler to keep her up-to-date. A month later, our baby in her arms, she walked back into the offices, and the first thing she saw were Gap people in the conference room.
My assistant buzzed to say that Don Fisher was here to see me. I had not been expecting him. With him was Mickey Drexler.
They came in, sat down, and Don cleared his throat, a habit of his, and said stiffly, “There’s going to be some changes I have to make for the good of the company.”
The “changes” were that going forward Patricia and I were to report to Mickey Drexler.
Mickey didn’t waste a second.
He said, “I want Patricia to go to Paris tomorrow, copy the best stuff that she sees in the stores, and put together some ideas for me for the fall line, which I want by next week.”
It was almost impossible in the moment for me to compute what was happening. My heart was pounding, and rage was bubbling up from every cell in my body. I looked at Don, who said nothing. Then I took a breath and looked Mickey in the eye.
“It’s not going to happen, Mickey,” I said.
“Fuck you, Mel!” Mickey screamed, and stormed out.
25
Coup
The astute reader will have understood, long before I, that unemployable means unemployable.
In many ways, it is astonishing that our adventure into employability lasted as long as it did. Until he didn’t keep it anymore, Don Fisher kept his word and gave us free rein. We did what we wanted to do, and then one day we couldn’t. The very idea of Mickey Drexler ordering Patricia—who had directed the design of every item Banana had ever sold; Patricia, with our one-week-old baby in arms—to go to Paris to copy (copy!) what was in the stores there could only have been a clumsy attempt to get us to see the door before we were shown it. So goes corporate life. One day you’re in, the next day . . .
I asked Don if we could buy back our company.
“I don’t sell,” he said. “I only buy.”
One could make a case that the fall of Gap’s stock price during the time when our company was split into different locations and I was home on bed rest made us vulnerable. Mickey’s hunger for respect and power, Bob’s drive to be on safely quantifiable turf rather than having to go on balancing his merchandise planning on our instincts, and Don’s need to keep Mickey, Bob, and Wall Street happy all conspired to make it look like it might be easier to operate the company without two unpredictable, difficult, and sometimes volatile founders calling the shots. A conversation, rather than an ambush, may have got us to the same place.
We left a lucrative new five-year contract we had just signed on the table and went on our way. The money, as much as we enjoyed having it, was an unexpected by-product anyway. All along, we had been in it for the freedom—and did we ever have freedom! The freedom to ignore convention, the freedom to imagine anything was possible, the freedom to hop on planes to explore anywhere at any time we wished, and ultimately the freedom to bring this product of our unfettered imaginations to life—all of it for no other purpose than creating the kind of company we wanted to work in. Free we were indeed. Until we weren’t. When the freedom was retracted, we knew at once we’d leave.
To this day, I do not know who ordered the security guard to ask us to hand over our Banana Republic discount cards on our way out the door.
At the size the business had grown to, around $250 million in annual sales, Gap wanted predictability, and elected to believe intuition answering to data was the surest way to achieve it. Though it could have been handled with more civility, our ejection from corporate culture was perhaps the most predictable outcome of all. We traded back a future of unlimited financial wealth for what we had worked for all along: unlimited freedom.
When Mickey stepped in as president after our resignation, Ed and most of our creative staff quit. A year later, Bob took over as president of Banana Republic for about four years. The catalogue was redesigned into a slick, nine-by-twelve-inch glossy with photographs of models replacing the illustrations. The jeeps, tents, and tusks were yanked from the stores and replaced by neat white shelving. Five design teams were hired and fired. The focus on travel was replaced with fashions for “casual Friday.”
Ironically, Bob, Don, and Mickey made their and the analysts’ worst fears come true. As they “repositioned” the company, Banana Republic cratered. Loyal customers fled en masse. For several years, the trio found themselves explaining to analysts time and again that they never expected the sheer volume of negative reaction they got from incensed Banana Republic customers offended by the abrupt changes in the stores and catalogues. The repositioning became an apologetic “turnaround.” Ultimately, after nearly a decade of thrashing about, Banana Republic was slotted, in the official lingo of the Gap annual report, into an “accessible luxury concept” with “higher price points” than Gap.
Years later, Don Fisher made another decision “in the best interest of the company.” He fired Mickey Drexler. Mickey has since gone on to burnish a well-deserved reputation on Wall Street as the “merchant prince�
� CEO of J.Crew. Bob Fisher went on to become chairman and CEO of Gap until he stepped aside in 2007. A few years after our departure, a venture capitalist who was a mutual acquaintance asked Bob why we had left the company we founded. He declared that we were steering it in the wrong direction; that working with us was like “having an ongoing root canal.” He remains a Gap director and, with his family, a major shareholder.
In 1989, the year after we left, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck the Bay Area just before the third game of the World Series at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. Six people were killed when our old brick building at Sixth and Bluxome streets collapsed. The landlord’s lawsuit was dismissed.
Ten years after we went our separate ways, before he died after a long battle with cancer, Don Fisher spotted us at a large dinner party that he and we were attending. Cheerfully, he came over to our table to reconnect.
“I have something I’ve been wanting to tell you,” he said with wine-enhanced enthusiasm in front of the others at the table. “That travel idea you had was brilliant. I should have stuck with it. We would have been like American Express.” On several other occasions, he ran into our friend the novelist Herbert Gold at events around San Francisco. As Herb reported to us after each encounter, Don told him unfailingly, “I could have made Mel and Patricia very rich.”
Very rich is not what we wanted. We just wanted to live life on our own terms. That is what we got.
When I was younger, I never found babies interesting. My only thoughts about motherhood were how to avoid it. But thankfully, Mel softened me to the possibility as I entered my midthirties. Once getting pregnant proved difficult—we battled infertility problems for years—it became another experience that I didn’t want to miss. Until the moment I held our newborn son in my arms, I was expecting a baby. Now that I held him, I was flabbergasted to see that I had given birth to a person, a very small and young and wrinkly one, but a complete unique person no less. His eyes looked deeply into mine, and he screamed, loudly. I now had a responsibility that shrank my role as chief creative officer down to the minor leagues. I had not a clue where to start. This infant would have to teach me, teach us, how to be parents together. And we thought that starting a business was a challenge!