The news this week that Gap had picked Mattel executive Richard Dickson as its next CEO seemed to be a bold move to reinvigorate the retail brand with someone who is riding high with the success of the new Barbie movie.
But if it sounded vaguely familiar, there’s a reason for that. In 2002, Gap did something very similar, going to the entertainment business and plucking former Disney executive Paul Pressler as its CEO, that time succeeding the legendary Mickey Wexler who was leaving on a sour note after a long run that turned into a slow but steady decline.
Four years later Pressler was gone, failing to turn around Gap and suffering through what the New York Times called “the third dismal holiday shopping season.” Since then, over the next more than 15 years Gap has churned through a fairly long roster of leaders, none of whom has consistently been able to make the company work. There have been any number of plans to do so, from splitting up its brands – besides Gap, it owns Old Navy, Banana Republic and Athleta – into multiple operating companies to bringing in the unpredictable Yeezy (Kanye West to his older friends) to…well, doing something other than what they were doing – whatever that was.
So Dickson arrives decades after Pressler but facing pretty much the same problems: Gap has too many stores, its namesake brand is lost between fashion irrelevance and fashion mockery, Old Navy and Banana seem to ricochet back and forth between encouraging upturns and stalled progress and fast fashion competitors like H&M, Zara, Uniqlo and Primark are crushing its market share.
Dickson does at least have some retail experience – Pressler had some too running Disney’s stores before he took in charge of its theme parks – having started his career at Bloomingdale’s and cofounding the Gloss online cosmetics retailer before going to Mattel in 2000. He left for a few years for Jones Apparel but came back to Mattel and since then has been the person most associated with the explosion of Barbie, driven by the movie and what will no doubt be a surge in sales of the doll itself as well as all its pink paraphernalia.
He’s also been on the Gap board since November of last year so he no doubt is going into his new job with his eyes wide open about what needs to be fixed. Whether he can do that – in a way that neither Pressler nor the series of execs who came after him were unable to do – is the big question.
Gap ain’t no movie.
WarrensReport 