Why gap isnt galloping anymore
Cindy Gallop, the champion of gender equality in the ad industry, has criticised WPP as part of a speech on the way the industry treats women.
Her comments had added bite for being delivered just a couple of hours before WPP chief Sir Martin Sorrell took the same stage to be interviewed by journalist Jane Martinson.
WPP employs a smaller proportion of women in its best-paid quartile than in the other quartiles, where the male-female ratio is roughly equal, according to Sorrell. The answer therefore is to promote more women. And this will be achieved by encouraging people through qualitative means, quantitative means, quotas, training programmes and bias training — we're doing all these things," he added.
When asked if he thought sexism was a problem for the industry, Sorrell sidestepped the question by responding that he has always believed women to be more effective than men. Beyond her criticism of WPP, the whole industry is very much "not satisfactory", Gallop had argued earlier. She again talked about the response she has had after she reacted to the Harvey Weinstein scandal by inviting from women in advertising to write to her if they had suffered sexual harassment.
I knew it was bad, I never knew it was this bad," Gallop said. She said the women told her about incidents ranging from inappropriate comments to outright violent rape, and the common refrain was "I left the industry because this happened".
They are protected by their companies and by the NDAs we sign," Gallop said. Supporting women and gender equality is not just morally right, she suggested, but is good business. Gap's strategic success was largely a product of a segmentation strategy wherein the firm attempted to focus stores' offerings on the unique needs of different market segments. Continuing with its commitment to segmentation, Gap created the Old Navy store concept to serve the needs of customers desiring to purchase products at the low end of casual fashion.
While they were designing Old Navy's concept, Gap officials concluded that the low-end casual fashion market segment was quite large. The company's Banana Republic stores were used for the purpose of serving the needs of those seeking to purchase higher end, more sharply differentiated casual clothing.
Ming, working in concert with her employees, has achieved a great deal of success in serving the needs of customers in Old Navy's market niche. Ming and her colleagues have demonstrated an uncanny knack for choosing the right fashion at the right moment. Across seasons, these fashion selections have appealed to Old Navy's large customer segment.
In light of its growth and potential, some analysts anticipate that in just a few years Old Navy sales will surpass those of the original Gap chain. Contributing to this expectation is the fact that Old Navy's products are much less expensive compared to offerings featured in Gap and Banana Republic stores.
An examination of the corporation's performance outcomes shows that Gap same-store sales declined from to while Old Navy's same-store sales increased at roughly a 20 percent rate over the time period. The store is the largest specialty retailer in the United States. I know best is when to maximize something," she told Business Week. By , there were Old Navy stores across the United States, but further expansion plans were halted after the downturn in the American economy that began in Though Old Navy had done extremely well under Ming, retail analysts believed that because some of its merchandise was similar to—but cheaper than—lines Gap carried in its stores, this had ultimately threatened the health of the parent company.
Gap, Inc. Drexler retired in after nineteen years with the company and was replaced by a Disney executive. Recognizing Ming's talents, Gap's board of directors made no changes to the Old Navy executive team. In , Old Navy celebrated its tenth anniversary in business with a new series of the amusing television ads for which the company had become known. Several celebrities had appeared in the winning ad campaigns over the years, including the late New York Times fashion writer Carrie Donovan — and television-soap vixen Morgan Fairchild —.
The tenth-anniversary campaign featured former Dynasty star Joan Collins — along with Sherman Helmsley — and Isabelle Sanford — , who played husband and wife on the popular s-era sitcom The Jeffersons. Sales from Old Navy stores continued to exceed those from Gap. Under Ming, Old Navy continued to introduce fresh, fashion-forward items at affordable prices. Ming devoted a large part of her work life to spotting new trends, and some of her off-work time as well.
She was visiting London once and noticed that teens were wearing blue jeans with a darker shade of denim. Once, she dropped one of the two daughters off at school on a planned "Pajama Day" and noticed that the teen girls were wearing what her daughter had chosen to wear, too—men's pajama bottoms, belted, with a tank top.
They never wear them," she recalled in an interview with Fast Company. Ming's hobbies include cooking and tennis. Her husband, Mitchell, is involved in the Sonoma County, California, winery industry. When asked by James J. Owens, a writer for a publication of the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, what she considered her greatest accomplishment, Ming replied that it was the fact that she had managed to have both a career and a family.
I took six weeks off and came back to work. Owens also asked her what kind of legacy she hoped to leave behind. She said she hoped it would be "the team of people who take over. I want the business to thrive and I want whoever replaces me to take the business to another level. I also want to leave behind the process of democratizing our brand: students who make very little money shop in our stores, but so do people who can afford to pay more.
Caminiti, Susan. Ming, Kameron. March : p. Nothum, T. Zipkin, Amy, and Jenny J. Women in Leadership Conference: Keynote. Toggle navigation. Chief executive officer. Family walks to freedom Ming was born in Canton, China, in