1. How can Gap set standards of performance given the new face of retail?

2. How much control and what types of controls should be in place to help Gap recover its design creativity while maintaining its financial control?

3. How do you achieve a balance between control and creativity? What techniques might help you achieve this balance?

Donald and Doris Fisher opened the first Gap store in 1969 in San Francisco, California. The Gap company started with $63,000 of borrowed cash, and the original store sold Levi’s jeans and LP records. The company reached $2 million in sales in their second full year of business. It wasn’t until 1974 that the company began to sell private-label merchandise. Over the next few decades the business grew into one of the world’s largest fashion retailers: In 1983, they took over Banana Republic and in 1994 they launched Old Navy. Old Navy became the first fashion retailer to reach $1 billion in annual sales in less than four years from their founding. Today the Gap Corporation has 150,000 employees with 3,300 locations worldwide, and more than 60 stores across Canada. 

Fashion is a difficult business, and finding a way to consistently attract customers is critical. Attracting customers into a store in a profitable manner is the goal of every fashion organization. Millard Drexler, the brilliant CEO who grew the business for two decades, was known as a fashion icon who tended to let the financial part of the business slip as he focused on the fashion side. While the business was growing at astronomical rates, these lapses were overlooked, but after more than two years of decreasing sales, and growing tensions with the Fisher family, Drexler was let go by the Gap in 2002, and was replaced as CEO by Paul Pressler, who had a long history of strict organizational control at Disney.