The Death of Clothing

[bettyellen]

75. I know, Gap is the parent company. I was talking about Gap division layoffs. Old Navy is in

San Francisco and keeping the whole thing afloat. The only better business that’s doing well for them is Athleta- also in SF. And they’ve held on to great quality. I’m actually agreeing with you about quality, but the other side of that is consumers got addicted to shopping “on sale” and it seriously impacted sales margins. As did giving over a lot of control to overseas vendors.

I worked at a few divisions there so I know, yes they literally threw away the book (we had a big one) on quality standards and let anything go. They didn’t want us to think about quality because they prices and delivery are set so tightly that anything you do to put a monkey wrench in it disturbs their master “plan”. They got mad at me when I pointed out that 10% shrinkage was a lot, and consumers would be angry after purchase. I literally had to was garments and show them before and after to get them to understand. We used to have rules about it- instead of that, you have idiots like me pissing off their bosses for warning them about stuff like that.

The thing is- they don’t have the standards or people in to watch these things for them anymore- those were good salary positions that basically don’t exist these days. Across the industry. Cost and speed to market. Share price. It’s all about short term thinking. But they look at Old Navy in a broad way and think- copy that success, and in general that is way the quality dipped. Banana is moving everyone to SF too- and they were probably some of the smartest most talented people left at Gap corporate after years of layoffs. They and the designers are all being replaced with inexperienced lower paid workers- but only for the jobs they can’t move overseas. So it’s going to get worse.

I’ve watched the decline first hand at both Gap and BR. The leadership at the parent company are about stock price and not product. But look at J Crew, their higher quality stuff bombed because of prices escalating. The business has been in a death spiral for a while, and competitive pricing online is a huge factor. People see things in stores and find a better price on line and shop there. So even when they go to stores they support them less. Local or chains, it doesn’t matter- it’s happenjng to all of brick and mortar stores these days. Overhead is expensive and so is talent. Shoppers are smarter because of the internet but they’re also cheaper and the margins are just not there if they never want to pay retail.