Banana Republic

The first is Alta Daily, which builds outfit suggestions around things like your schedule, your budget, and the weather forecast.

The second is Daydream, where shoppers describe what they want in plain language and get ideas back from all four brands, Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, and Athleta.

On top of that, Old Navy and Banana Republic are also launching their own conversational shopping agents on their websites and apps.

Now, the timing here is by no means an accident.

It's SF Tech Week, and Gap is hosting its own event at headquarters on Wednesday.

Yeah.

And we did the story of Banana Republic, um, which is a great story.

Mel and Patricia Ziegler founded the store actually in Marin County here in Northern California.

You know, they were making a lot of the clothes themselves, and then they start to make this, what became this iconic catalog to promote it, which, uh, some people remember.

Yeah.

Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, J.Crew, and on and on and on, and a brilliant, kind human.

I went to Mickey and said, "Mickey, I don't know what to do.

I got this idea.

We're looking for juniors that you then join a management intern program for the last two years of your college experience, and then after that we'll move you to San Francisco." This was Gap Inc., by the way.

So it was a Gap store that I was in front of, but it's Gap Inc., which, you know, at that time owned Banana Republic, Gap, and Old Navy.

Yeah.

And they said, "After you graduate, we'll move you to San Francisco and you can work the corporate office, you can work the field stores, and we'll basically teach you the ins and outs of really good management," right? Good operations, marketing, customer care, production, like the whole gamut.

No.

The reason I ended up in beauty, Mike, is because I was taking a flight and it was December and I was flying to San Francisco to have a meeting with The Gap and Banana Republic and different brands, Old Navy.

And it was a one day trip.

So, you know, I know San Francisco probably as well as I know Chicago.

You know more.

You will only have like Banana Republics and the Uniqlo's and Lululemon, Nike, and that's about it, right? So by having this new platform, those brands can find a new outlet for the unsold inventory.

But most importantly, we send the data back to them.

What data? The feedback, right? Because yes, I can get their unsold inventory to the customer's hand and help them to look great, but if they keep producing junk, the world's not going to be better.