The Gap. Have they gotten too BIG?
It really doesn't matter what city you are in when you decide to go the mall to go shopping, most shopping centers have generally the same genre of stores. These extend all the way from hair salons to jewelry stores, specialty stores to department stores. While each mall has there own "anchor" stores that signifies the elegance or character that they try to portray, most of the "common" stores stay relatively the same. Some of these include Foot Locker, Victoria Secret, Claire's, Lane Bryant, and the Limited. Even though all of these businesses make good profits every year, each one has had their own type of negative media attention regarding everything from use of sweatshops to the selling of adult magazine "accessories". Well, the Gap is no different.
The Gap wants to make it easy for you to express your personal style throughout your life. They attempt to do this by having several stores with different names and different clothing styles. From Gap Kids to the Gap, Old Navy to Banana Republic, even Piperlime, their new online shoe store, Gap is trying to get the business of every age group possible. Overall, Gap brought in $15.9 billion in net sales during 2006.
Gap goes through five phases every season rather than every year. These phases include; design and merchandising, planning and sourcing, production and marketing, distribution, and finally sales and analysis. Gap uses customer feedback to look for improvements that need to be made at the end of a season, then start the entire process over again. The Gap sees their clothing as a way for each individual to express himself or herself, and ...