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Essay about Gap: Case Study

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SYNOPSIS

Gap, Inc. was originally founded by Doris and Donald Fisher. The company has evolved from a single store located in San Francisco, California into a predominate retail chain that includes the Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Forth & Towne, and Piperlime.com. The company sells a huge variety of clothing from casual to chic for men, women, and children.
The 21st century has brought hard times to this extremely successful company, especially Gap adult stores and the company is losing market share. Key problems with the company have been identified and the follow solutions have been offered: increase supply chain streamlining and efficiency, decrease number of stores, hire creative staff to focus on fashion styles and trends, …show more content…

Unfortunately, Mr. Fisher’s strategy of attracted customer by means of selling records caused no one to notice the jeans and the store was almost driven to bankruptcy ("The Gap, Inc.," 2006). Mr. Fisher invested more in advertising his low prices and emphasized the youthful ambiance of the store naming it The Gap, an allusion to the generation gap in society ("The Gap, Inc.," 2006). Donald Fisher “incorporated his business as The Gap Stores, Inc. and it was an immediate success” ("The Gap, Inc.," 2006). Within two years of opening the first Gap store, sales were at $2.5 million annually ("The Gap, Inc.," 2006). The company went public though the Fishers retained a majority of the stock ("The Gap, Inc.," 2006). Within five years, Gap sales increase almost 50-fold to $97 million and there were 186 stores total ("The Gap, Inc.," 2006).
In 1983, Millard ("Mickey") Drexler joined the Gap, Inc. as President and COO of the Gap division and the Gap grew significantly from this point. Within the same year, the company acquired Banana Republic, a safari and travel clothing company with only two stores ("About Gap, Inc.," 2007). In 1986 the first GapKids store opened and in 1987 the first international Gap store opened in London, England ("About Gap, Inc.," 2007). The Gap became the second-largest selling apparel brand in the world in 1992 ("About Gap, Inc.," 2007). In 1994, the first Old

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