Managing the Gap

The Gap inc. has earned the reputation as the most popular and profitable specialty clothing chain in America today. Sles at the Gap and its affiliates, Gaps kids, Banana Republic,and old navy,are currently running at close to $ 5 billion annually. Earning were $ 700 million in a recent year. The company currently has about 2,400 stores in five countries. The two top executives at The Gap are president mickey s. Drexler and the founder, Chairman G.Fisher.

The formula behind the Gap extraordinary success is good style, good quality, and good value. Store sites are carefully selected by Fisher, and each Gap Store is clean and well lit. Gap stores make it possible for consumers to shop easily and quickly. The atmosphere at the store leads employees tofuss over details such as cleaning floors and,at Gap kids,rounding the corners of the fixtures to prevent puncture wounds. The company boasts a high tech distribution system that keeps the Gap outlets stocked with fresh merchandise.

Fisher , regarded as low key and conservative in personal style,enjoy working on the details of site selection,store construction,and clothing manufacturing. Drexler, in contrast, make most of the major merchandising decisions.

Several years ago Drekler simplified the way The Gap did business. He replaced executive who relied too heavily on complicated quantitative research. He preferred executives who relied quickly on intuition in selecting merchandise and deciding when to pull slow sellers from the shelves.

Both Drexler and Fisher have pushed heavily for quality. The company has placed its own,quality inspectors in many of manufacturing sites around the world that make clothing for the Gap label. The company designs its own clothing, chooses its own meterials,and monitors manufacturing carefully.

At one time Drexler supervised every major design decision, and he still keeps close tabs on design. He characteristically roams around the stores, dropping in unexpectedly on employees to praise or criticize projects in design, advertising, and merchandising, for reasons such as these,Drexler has been described as a hand on president.

Drexler devotes considerable time and energy to fixing problems. When Drexler was hired in 1983, The Gap's merchandise wasn't compelling,the stores were drab, and the competition was also selling private labels. Drexler swung into action.He dumped all the private labels except the Gap line. He hired new designers,upgraded the quality of the clothes, and overhauled the appearance of the stores. A retail analyst said, " You really have to MICKEY credit for reinventing the whole company. It was one of the great turnarounds in retail history." DREXLER strategy was to give the store's everyday products a brand image.

Despite impressive successes between 1983 and 1991 , new problems arose that required fixing. The competition jumped on The GAP's bandwagon