Mickey Drexler

Mickey Drexler
Born	Millard S. Drexler 1944-08-17August 17, 1944 (age 82) The Bronx, New York City, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	Bronx High School of Science City College of New York University at Buffalo (B.A.) Boston University (M.B.A.)
Alma mater	University at Buffalo (BA) Boston University (MBA)
Occupation	Business executive, retailer
Years active	1968-present
Employer	Gap Inc. (1983-2002) J.Crew (2003-2019) Alex Mill (2021-present)
Title	Chairman and CEO
Term	1995-2002 (Gap Inc.) 2003-2017 (J.Crew)
Successor	Paul Pressler (Gap Inc.) James Brett (J.Crew)
Known for	CEO of Gap Inc. Chairman and CEO of J.Crew Creation of Old Navy Apple board member
Children	2, including Alex Drexler

Millard S. Drexler (born August 17, 1944), known as Mickey Drexler, is an American retail executive who served as chief executive officer of Gap Inc. from 1995 to 2002 and as chairman and chief executive of J.Crew from 2003 to 2017. He is chief executive of the clothing brand Alex Mill and head of Drexler Ventures.

Drexler is associated with the rise of American specialty apparel retailing in the 1980s and 1990s. At Gap he shifted the chain from reselling other manufacturers' brands to selling its own private-label merchandise, created the Old Navy and GapKids chains, and repositioned Banana Republic. He served on the board of directors of Apple Inc. from 1999 to 2015, a period in which the company built its retail store network. The trade press has referred to him as a "merchant prince," a term used for retailers who rely on personal instinct about product rather than on market research.

Early life and education

Drexler was born on August 17, 1944, in The Bronx, New York City, to a Jewish family. His father worked as a fabric buyer in Manhattan's garment district, and Drexler has described accompanying him to work as an early exposure to the apparel trade. His mother died when he was 16.

He attended the Bronx High School of Science, then City College of New York, before completing a bachelor's degree at the University at Buffalo. He subsequently earned a Master of Business Administration from Boston University.

Career

Early retail career

Drexler began his career in department store merchandising, then the standard training ground for American retail executives. He worked at Bloomingdale's and Macy's, and by the mid-1970s was a merchandising vice president at Abraham & Straus in Brooklyn.

In 1980 he became president of Ann Taylor, his first chief executive-level role. Over roughly three years he is credited with reversing the women's wear chain's decline by narrowing its assortment and sharpening its positioning. The turnaround established his reputation and brought him to the attention of Gap founder Donald Fisher.

Gap Inc.

Drexler joined Gap Inc. in 1983 as president of the Gap division. At the time the company operated several hundred stores selling Levi's jeans and other manufacturers' brands, competing largely on price and location.

Private label and brand repositioning

Drexler's central decision was to move the chain away from reselling other companies' products and toward merchandise designed and branded by Gap itself. This gave the company control over design, quality, pricing and inventory, and higher gross margins, but required it to develop design and sourcing capabilities it had not previously needed.

The repositioning succeeded. Through the late 1980s and 1990s Gap became identified with a particular version of American casual dress, built around basic garments in simple colors. Its television advertising, which used popular music including "Mellow Yellow" and "Dress You Up," helped establish the brand in mainstream culture, and Gap khakis became associated with the "casual Friday" workplace shift of the 1990s.

Drexler also expanded the company's portfolio of brands. He launched GapKids in 1986, extending the range to children's clothing. In 1994 he created Old Navy, a lower-priced chain intended to compete with discount retailers without diluting the Gap brand; Old Navy grew quickly and became a substantial business in its own right. He also repositioned Banana Republic, which Gap had acquired in 1983 as a safari-themed catalogue retailer, into an upscale contemporary brand.

Drexler was named chief executive of Gap Inc. in 1995. Over his tenure the company expanded from several hundred stores to roughly 4,000, with revenue reaching approximately $14 billion.

Relationship with Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs served on the Gap Inc. board during Drexler's time at the company, and the two became friends. Jobs sought Drexler's advice as Apple planned its move into retail, and Drexler joined the Apple board in 1999. He is reported to have advised Jobs to build a prototype store in a warehouse and refine it before opening to the public, a step Apple took. Drexler served on the Apple board until 2015.

Departure

By the early 2000s Gap's results had deteriorated. A period of rapid store expansion coincided with merchandising decisions that pushed the brands toward more fashion-driven assortments, and same-store sales declined across an extended run of months. Debt rose substantially.

Drexler's relationship with the Fisher family, which controlled the company, deteriorated alongside the results. On May 22, 2002, founder Donald Fisher required him to announce his retirement. Drexler remained chief executive until September 26, 2002, when Paul Pressler, an executive from The Walt Disney Company, was named his successor. Drexler was publicly critical of the manner of his departure. Sales began to recover within roughly a month of his exit, a rebound he attributed to merchandise decisions made before he left.

J.Crew

In 2003 Drexler was hired as chairman and chief executive of the J.Crew Group, a New York-based clothing retailer founded in 1983 as a catalogue business that had opened its first store at the South Street Seaport in 1989. The company was then controlled by the private equity firm Texas Pacific Group and was losing money. Drexler invested a substantial amount of his own money in the business alongside his appointment.

Repositioning

Drexler applied a strategy similar to the one he had used at Gap, but in the opposite direction on price. J.Crew had been a moderately priced provider of dressy-casual American clothing; he moved it upmarket, raising prices, improving fabrics and construction, and narrowing the assortment around a distinct point of view. He recruited designer Jenna Lyons, who became creative director and later president and whose aesthetic shaped the brand's public identity through the late 2000s.

The repositioning worked for roughly a decade. J.Crew returned to profitability, completed an initial public offering in 2006, and gained wide press attention when Michelle Obama wore the brand publicly during and after the 2008 presidential campaign. Drexler also relaunched Madewell in 2006 as a separate denim-centred brand aimed at younger customers; it later became the group's stronger performer.

In 2011 TPG and Leonard Green & Partners took J.Crew private in a leveraged buyout valued at approximately $3 billion. The transaction left the company with substantial debt.

Decline and departure

From roughly 2014 J.Crew's results deteriorated. Consumer spending on apparel shifted toward lower prices and online channels, fast-fashion competitors compressed the market, and the debt from the buyout constrained the company's ability to respond. Same-store sales declined over successive years and the company took significant write-downs.

Drexler was unusually direct in accepting responsibility. He acknowledged that the company had raised prices and expanded during years when consumers were becoming more price-sensitive, and said publicly that he had been slow to recognise how completely the internet was changing the business.

On June 5, 2017, J.Crew announced that Drexler would step aside as chief executive. He was succeeded by James Brett, formerly of West Elm. Drexler remained chairman until January 18, 2019, when he announced his retirement from that role while continuing as a strategic adviser to the office of the chief executive and to the board.

Alex Mill and later activity

Drexler became chief executive of Alex Mill, a clothing brand founded by his son Alex Drexler, and merged it with his own investment interests. He also heads Drexler Ventures, through which he has invested in and advised a number of consumer businesses.

Business philosophy and management style

Drexler's method rested on direct personal involvement in product decisions rather than delegation to market research. He was known for walking store floors, handling merchandise, questioning individual garments and prices, and speaking directly to store employees and customers.

At both Gap and J.Crew he used a public address system to broadcast announcements across the corporate office, a practice intended to keep information moving quickly and to reinforce that merchandising decisions were a shared, urgent activity. He held frequent merchandise reviews at which products were examined item by item.

His approach carried a recognised risk: a business built around one person's instinct is difficult to sustain when that instinct is wrong or when the market moves away from it. Both of his major tenures followed a similar arc, in which a decisive repositioning produced years of growth followed by a period in which the same convictions became liabilities. Drexler has acknowledged this pattern in interviews.

Controversies

Circumstances of the Gap departure

Drexler's removal from Gap in 2002 was contested publicly. He argued that the merchandise responsible for the subsequent recovery had been developed under his direction, and was critical of how the Fisher family handled his exit.

The J.Crew leveraged buyout

The 2011 buyout, in which Drexler participated alongside TPG and Leonard Green, drew shareholder litigation over the process by which the deal was reached, including questions about whether Drexler's simultaneous roles as chief executive and buyer participant created a conflict of interest. The company settled the litigation. The debt from the transaction is widely cited as a constraint on the company's ability to respond to changing conditions later in the decade, and J.Crew filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2020, after Drexler had left.

Merchandising decisions

Drexler's willingness to move J.Crew upmarket was criticised after the fact as a misreading of where apparel spending was heading. Retail analysts also questioned specific decisions, including price increases on core items and an expansion of the assortment into higher-priced fashion pieces that did not sell.

Personal life

Drexler lived in San Francisco during his years at Gap Inc. and moved to New York. He has two children; his son Alex Drexler founded the Alex Mill brand that Drexler later ran.

Drexler made a guest appearance as a car wash customer in "Confessions," an episode of the AMC drama Breaking Bad. He has said the scene required nine takes.

He has supported his alma maters and has spoken frequently at business schools about retailing and product judgement.

Legacy

Drexler is among the more influential American retailers of the late twentieth century. The shift he led at Gap, from reselling manufacturers' brands to designing and selling private label merchandise, became the standard model for specialty apparel chains and was widely copied. Old Navy, which he created, remains one of the largest apparel chains in the United States.

His tenure at J.Crew is treated more ambiguously. The upmarket repositioning produced roughly a decade of growth and made the brand culturally prominent, but the strategy proved poorly suited to the retail conditions of the mid-2010s, and the company's debt load left little margin for correction. Madewell, which Drexler launched, outlasted the parent brand's difficulties.

His service on the Apple board during the development of the Apple Store is frequently cited in accounts of that project, and connects two of the more studied retail expansions of the period.

External links

• Profile at The Business of Fashion