Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler

Hey, really quick before we start the show, we have an announcement about a really exciting new thing we're launching. A newsletter and like our show. The newsletter is designed to be interesting, informative, inspiring, and most importantly fun. It's 100% free, and to sign up, just visit gyras.com. That's G-U-Y-R-A-Z-

Dot com. I remember going to the printer to put out our latest catalog. and I hadn't slept in like three nights. I think I was just up round the clock, just trying to get it all pasted up and ready to go. I was driving home across the Golden Gate Bridge, and all of sudden I hear this honk I wake up. And realise I've veered into the oncoming traffic. You were falling asleep. I was falling asleep.

I was so sleep starved and I went home and I just broke down. And I just told Mel, We can't do the catalogue and the store and make the clothes. I just Uh uh we can't I can't do all this. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements.

They built. I'm Guy Roz, and on the show today, how Patricia and Mel Ziegler brought a sense of style to army surplus clothes, sold them in a safari setting. And built a multi million dollar business. Banana Republic. A lot of people sit at their desks and dream about starting a business.

You might be doing this very thing at this very moment. I remember having that feeling and I remember the anxiety I felt leaving my job to do it. And so it's probably why I identify with today's story so much. Because Mel and Patricia Ziegler were like me. Journalists. Back in the 1970s, they both worked for the San Francisco Chronicle. This was a primo gig, a job you don't leave. The Chronicle, at the time, was a prestige newspaper. But neither Mel nor Patricia was satisfied.

And so when an idea came to them to start their own thing, they decided to take the leap. The problem, like so many startup stories, was money. They didn't have much to start. but what they did have were complimentary skills.

Mel was a writer, Patricia was an artist who also knew how to sew. So together, they set out to tell a story about clothing. Mel would write a quirky, photocopied, and hand-stapled catalog, Patricia would buy inexpensive army surplus clothing and gussie it up with fashion forward alterations. With the little money they did have, they were able to open one shop in the sleepy town of Mill Valley, California, about twenty minutes north of San Francisco. This was in 1978, and they called their little store. Banana Republic.

At first No one came. Crickets. But eventually, people started to discover their safari themed apparel. Now, the original Banana Republic was very different to what you see today, and we'll get to that. But what made the brand pop? and then explode nationally was how different it was at the time.

Stores were decorated with life-sized palm trees. Bush planes hung from the ceiling. Jeeps embedded in the front doors. And the Zieglers started this thing. with just 1500 bucks. Mel and Patricia met in the mid-1970s at the San Francisco Chronicle. Mel was a reporter, Patricia was a courtroom illustrator, and sketch artist. Patricia had majored in art in college. This was during the Vietnam War era, but as it happens, becoming an art major

was kind of accidental. When I got to U C Santa Barbara and I was registering for my I guess it was the second year I was registering for my major. I thought I was in the anthropology line and the lines were like two hours long. I got up to the head of the line and said, Okay, I want to register for anthropology, she said, Oh, this is the art line

Anthropology's the next one over. I thought, Oh, I can't do another two hours in the sun. Okay. It's my fate. I'm an artist. Um From what I understand

in your early twenties before you started your career which would would also be at the San Francisco Chronicle. Um, you kinda drifted for uh at least a year, maybe more. At least a couple of years. And I call it my walkabout. And what did you do? I mean you you you've written a little bit about this in your book that you had a evading the draft and you were camping and hitchhiking and uh living up in the mountains in Santa Cruz and

Yeah. What what were you doing? Well, um things were getting very stormy at U C Santa Barbara and um you know, it was just right before they burned the Bank America building down. My boyfriend was Drafted. Was

had uh was was called up. And He had heard that there was a psychiatrist up in Stamford. Who is helping guys get out of the draft. So

He asked me to come with him. We hitchhike up together. Came back about two days late. I see all my stuff in the alley at my apartment. I asked people So

Where's Sue, my roommate? She said. Oh, I hear the people dropped out that were here before. I said, what? There are very ambitious real estate people in Isla Vista that just, you know, wanted to keep all this apartment filled. So I had no place to live. My parents weren't too happy about my draft resisting boyfriend, so they kind of stopped talking to me and um

I went into the dean's and said, You know, I decided I don't need a license to be an artist. I'm out of here. Mm. And we took off. Uh

I'm I'm I made him a pair of fringe leather pants. We took off Hitchhiking. Everybody wanted a pair of French leather pants that saw us. And um So that became my

Income for the next couple years as I traded Fringe pants. Um for rides to Idaho, Oregon, just I would tell myself. And um

Basically just travelled wherever Our thumbs would take us. Yeah. Um I know eventually you

You went back to Finish your Art. studies. Um and out of that you started you got a a a gig at the Chronicle as a

Sketch Illustrator, right? This was I don't even know if newspapers hire They're Th these are jobs and newspapers anymore, but you are basically Uh sketching in courtrooms, right?

I was both sketching in courtrooms and also sketching for the Daily Paper. And I was just thrilled. Here was a job where I'd go in, read stories. And draw. It was and and then at that time they just started letting artists into the courtrooms.

Like Patty Hurst in the zebra trial, Sarah Jane Moore. Um There was a lot going on. In San Francisco at that time. So you were covering so you were sketching these trials. In the meantime, Mel, you were also the chronicle and you were covering some of these stories as a reporter, right? Mm-hmm.

Yes. How how did the two of you meet at the at the paper? Yeah. Well I think in those days. The only job an unemploymable person could get was a

Anyway, I um I was sitting there. I was covering these stories. And then I saw this beautiful woman walk in.

And Turn into the art department. And I thought, Whoa. That's somebody I wanna meet. And right in front of the

of the art department was the copy machine, the Xerox machine as they called it that day. So I suddenly developed All these Things I had to copy. Yeah. And I went over and copied and copied and copied and stole as many glasses as I could until finally

A couple of days later there was a wizard. Christmas party. And I worked up my courage to go over in. Meet Patricia. And

It was a moment that we talk about a lot because It was one of those moments that will be lost in time forever because when we both saw each other there was Such a profound connection. That In many ways we haven't

Barely been em. Apart since. Huh. And and and so You guys be became an item pretty pretty soon after that?

We did, but we tried to keep it. Quiet. And then one we we decided at one point to Both take a week off at the same time, and we went to Hawaii and we both came back. But tan.

So if you th look at this chronicle newsroom Full of people in the middle of January. And there's two tan faces here and there. So people began to suspect Were they what were they together? How did this happen? But we didn't really let anybody know. I mean we were very

Quiet about it. For two years. We really kept it uh Yeah. Remember? Yeah, it's but it was so much fun in San Francisco in those days. It was so much fun. This is the the mid to late seventies. It was so much fun. It was just such a different city than it is today. It was just a really vibrant

Bohemian city free spirited in every way. Alright, so you guys Date and then Two years later you get married.

Yeah. Did both of you f I mean, Patricia, from your perspective, when you were you know, you guys get married in nineteen seventy seven, um Did you think that that the career path that both of you chosen would be your life? I mean, did you imagine that, okay, you know, we're here at the Chronicle and this is what we're probably gonna end up doing? Well, we're having a lot of fun at the Chronicle.

Um and also a press pass could get you a parking place anywhere on any corner, fire hydrant or not. But um We looked around one day and realized that some of those people had been there for thirty years. And it that was kind of horrifying. Yeah. Well we wanted to travel. I think we really wanted to travel and see the world and it was pretty g difficult to do, uh being tied down

Well you had to show up every day. You couldn't be in Tim Book Two or you know So when you guys left the Chronicle, you did not have this grand idea to start a business. It was just Let's just travel and we'll make some money as freelancers and that's it. Figure it out. We'll figure it out. Yeah. Okay. So there's no plan beyond that. Okay. So how did that go? Well It was more difficult than we thought.

I mean freelancing wasn't really Joined it. Get us where we wanted to get. That became pretty clear pretty soon. We weren't going to get enough money to travel to see the world. And so uh

We at that point said, Well, we gotta figure out something. We we gotta start a business. But we had no idea what kind of business we were gonna start. But wh how did that idea even come to your minds? I say this as a former journalist, and I know. Journalists are entrepreneurial in many ways in how they operate, but very few of them Think about

starting a business. They don't have that perspective for a variety of reasons. So what even gave you the idea of starting a business? Our goal was always to be free. Our goal was always to be able to r live the life we wanted to live.

And starting a business was going to be the only ticket we could possibly Think of. Did d was there something that inspired that idea? You found that book. Napoleon Hill. Grow Rich. Classic. A classic. It was it was a silly wonderful book. Like written in the fi thirties or it was simple, profound, it was and I brought it I I I read it. I said, this is what we gotta do. We got it.

We gotta figure out. how we're going to do this. And so I is I recall there were three steps. to this thing. How much money do you want to make? How long will it take you?

to make it and what will you do? Yeah. The magic number was a million dollars. We wanted to make a million dollars. Five years? We'd give it five years. We had no idea what kind of business. No idea. But right about that time you got the assignment to go to Australia.

And I I had a freelance assignment to go to Australia. I was gone for a couple of for a week or two. And in Australia uh they had the they have uh their versions of army navy stores are called disposal stores. And I in those days, ever since even at Columbia in the nineteen sixty eight, all I wore was army surplus. The old P jackets and the

And uh so I was fascinated by that. Those that was the only place I shopped. So I went into the And I came out with this beautiful khaki jacket and I And and of course there are still army surplus stores But the I think

I imagine they were just much more prominent in the seventies. First of all, there was still so much World War Two era stuff. That had to be unloaded, and then of course there were other wars. Yes. Basically these are stores that sold like what pea coats, like Navy pea coats and Australia was part of the the British. Empire. At some point. And so the what I found there was not available in the US. And what the the jacket I found was a it was I think a Burma from Burma.

The the cotton is thicker than anything I've ever seen to this day. It was beautiful. It was well tailored. It was a well tailored jacket. I don't know. Probably an officer's jacket. Mm-hmm. I mean, listen, they know what they're doing. Yeah. So you you get this jacket.

And I should add fr from what I understand, Mel You were not uh clothes guy. You were not like a clothes maven. Like Patricia was. Like Patricia was always well you were always well dressed. I always found fashion to be a language or style. Personal style. And you always like D did you have the cash to buy nice stuff? No, I'd go to flea markets or vintage stores or make it myself. Nice. I don't care about fashion.

I don't care about what I wear, I wear the next available thing in the closet. I gotcha. And I should I just point out today, you're a very well dressed man, very well put together. But back then. You were you know not a schlub, but just uh you know an army surplus just too much. So you buy this cool and did you buy the jacket thinking, oh Patricia's gonna love this. Or did you just By'cause you liked it. Well yeah, I knew she would like this jacket. I knew she would because she sh she was a flea market shopper and she would appreciate that this was a very special jacket.

And what did you think about it when you saw it in San Francisco? Wow. I said This guy's finally got style. No, I thought it was fabulous. Yeah. I th I th but You know

It needed new buttons and I thought it could use a few other touches. So I offered to um Yeah some leather under the collar patches on it was amazing. Patches on the all the time. So it went back to the chronicle every day. Where did you get that jacket? And I guess that was The extent of the research. That made us realize that

This is what we oughta do we oughta find more stuff like this and sell it. So that and the strength of that jacket and people asking you where you got it. The two of you th Begin to think. Let's

open a basically an Army Army Navy surplus style store? No. No. No, no. But if you could find jackets like that. Yeah. You could Upgrade them, you know, kind of Add some add some classy touches and patches or patches. Or eventually Cut up the pieces, make them into different things. But um Yeah, and then we would sell

Um Safari clothes. So how so alright, but going from have from a cool jacket in Australia from our Navy circle store to people in San Francisco saying I love that to then the two of you saying, you know, let's do this. Let's try to find things like this. Well then what do you do? Like then then that's a b a bigger leap. Well then then it helped it helped to be a reporter. And I started to do some calling around and I found out how where this army surplus was being sold. It was largely being sold by the government in huge lots. Uh that we're auctioned off it. Air Force bases and other places like that. So you could actually go to Travis Air Force Base and

This is in uh Alton outside the Bay Area, just sort of in the edge of the Bay Area, yes. Places like that. Anywhere and the government would have it in auction. where they would sell lots of government surplus. So a lot of government surplus could be, you know, Fifty shorts. khaki shorts. Several dozen

Tubes of Army toothpaste. Typewriters. And so we walked around this thing and we went to these things and they were we were the only people there who were not surplus jobbers. The surplus jobbers would go there, buy a lot. And figure out how to sell all this stuff to everything else and the clothes would be part of what they would turn up in the Army's Navy store. And the people who went to these auctions were People who had army surplus.

They were the jobbers. They would buy the lots and sell them off to the Army Navy stores. But Mel found the name of a few jobbers. He was a guy who would go to these auctions and at at the airbase. All over the country. And he would just hit a warehouse in Oakland. Crap.

Full of everything. Uh Peacoats, whatever. Everything. Okay, so you find this guy in Oakland. Thinking.

We're gonna maybe we could buy some some stuff from him and then okay. And what w First of all, when you got in there He would know that we didn't have a store.

Yeah. We'd have to go in with some kind of a story. Well I decided that I'd play some some rich dilettant, you know, woman who wanted to start a boutique and my husband would just be wanting to please me. Please me and and and this would So you you pretended like you were a sort of a trust fund dilettant wanting to start a store. Which to me seems like a not a great strategy because then you would think that maybe he would he had dollar signs in his eyes and think he did a dumb rich kid.

Dollar twenty five. For what? For Everything was either two dollars, one dollar. Nothing was more than a couple of dollars. I would ask, you know, oh what about those? And he started Uh two fifty. Yeah, and then I found Then we walk a little further and I say, How about this?

It's a Two Twenty five. You know and I could tell he was just playing this all by ear. Yeah. But then I saw this pile of

of olive green and khaki. Look like great fabric. I went over and felt the fabric and I could see it was a shirt with applees and they had this cool Yeah.

Um patch on the sleeve that was paratrooper. It was like a button down shirt. No, m made of a kind of rayon and cotton blend. It was yeah, it was just beautiful. Had a beautiful drape to it. The colours were kind of vintagey looking, olive and khaki. And um

I knew that the there was something here. In those shirts. You you knew that you could figure out how to sell those shirts. Yes. Okay, beef just before we go on. How much money did you guys have? Between you at the time. Fifteen hundred dollars.

one thousand five hundred dollars. And and so that was what you were going to use. This is our life savings. And a credit card. We had a finance the business, pay our rent You know pay our expenses. Yeah. And before we get to how you did it, did you have an idea of how you would sell these? Did you think it were gonna'cause you did not have a shot. We were making it up as we went along. We figured we would

First find the shirts. Find the shirts, then we'll figure out how to sell them. And and but you didn't have a name for your business yet. Not yet. Not yet. Okay. It was just let's just get these shirts. And and so These were shirts from where? From Spain. From Spain. So the Spanish Army. Spanish paratrooper. Spanish paratroopers. You could see a paratrooper. Um Emblem there was a

And Uh that was embroidered on the sleeve. And they were clean, they were Oh no. No. Oh no, they were never piled in the side. You you've got you could smell them all the way. You got a you get did you get a decent price for them? I think we paid a dollar, dollar and fifty. He was asking, I remember, he was asking one seventy five. Yeah. And I said, Well how many do you have? And um.

Yeah. And I said, Well, at one fifty we'll take them all. It was like Okay. Yeah. So we piled them in the back of our car. And that was how many shirts, do you remember? Five hundred shirts. Five hundred shit. That was it. That was it.

We put them in the back of our car. We drove home. And uh we we brought them down to our washroom. There were five hundred shirts. We had a piles of piles of shirts we had to wash them ourselves. Yeah. Because they hadn't been washed. And so we did that. And we had a dinner party. at that point with a number of our writer friends and other friends, uh uh uh uh one of whom was uh a a dear friend of mine, Herb Gold.

who actually just recently died at 99. a wonderful novelist. He wrote about thirty six novels, but at that point He was there at dinner. And he went down, he said, Where's the bathroom? It's downstairs near the near the he went down he came back upstairs with the shirt and he said, What's this? And uh

I said, Oh, her b that th that's a Spanish paratrooper shirt. We've just but he said Oh, I love it. I and he started taking off his denim shirt and putting on the shirt and um Then he realized the sleeve stopped about mid forearm. And so I ran down and got him another one. And those sleeves were too short. I ran down and got two more and they were all super short.

Does And do do Spanish paratroopers have short arms? I think they were just a defect of the army. I see, okay. Which is why they which is why they were surplus to be able to do it. So you bought five hundred irregular defective shirts. Did you were you crestfallen at it at I mean we're just we're thinking so fast because that's we had no choice. Yeah. And I just looked at her but I said Oh, Herb, you wouldn't nobody would want to wear sleeves rolled down with a shirt like this anyway, and I went over and I rolled up his shirt, sleeves, and I said, There and he looks in the mirror and he was Very pleased. Yeah. And it has so much more panache, you know.

He said how much. How much? And and you were and I I was about to give him the shirt. Yeah. As you should. Here's your friend. Patricia said. And he said great deal. And now you've got four hundred and ninety nine shirts. That you're washing and hang drying, I guess, in your basement or whatever. Yes. Uh and how are you going to move that product? Well there was a flea market. Uh in Marin County then.

in Marin City and uh it was a d very dusty flea market every Sunday. We we said let's go to the flea market and sell these things. So that's what we did. We set up a booth. Um short arm paratrooper shirt six fifty. Short armed paratrooper shirt. Short armed Spanish paratrooper shirt. Or short armed Spanish paratrooper shirt. Yeah. Nobody bought any. Nobody bought one. We probably sold enough to cover the

Booth fear. A booth fee was thirty or forty dollars that day. But I but I knew that we did it wrong. We had a problem. Yeah. But Tricia had the solution. Which was Which was Well, People don't see the value. We've got to raise the price.

So the next weekend we went to the fair. And I styled Mel in one, you know, put up the collar a little roll the sleeve. She wasn't wearing it the first time. Neither of us were. Okay. Which was such a mistake. So and um and then I wore mine belted over some tight jeans and heels and made a sign that said Spanish short arm parachute. Trooper shirts. twelve ninety five. Double the price. Double the price. Double the I didn't think the price was communicating the value of this shirt.

So we put up the sign were there looking stylish in these shirts and now it's twelve ninety five which was a lot of money in nineteen seventy eight. We were swamped. Wow we sold We had a couple hundred dollars at the end of the day, I remember that, and we said Let's Let's open a store.

When we come back in just a moment, how Patricia and Mel create so much buzz with their Safari themed store. That they hit a wall. And almost smash into a bridge. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's nineteen seventy six and Mel and Patricia have made a little cash by selling their Spanish short armed paratrooper shirts at the farmers market. And with that cash They decide to open a store. And Mel decides to give that store kind of an Unusual name.

Banana Republic. It was irreverent. Yeah. It was intentionally irreverent. It was going to get attention. Um because An Anna Republic is a an unstable

Country where Mil the military takes over The treasury. We were only gonna be able to sell these kinds of things if they had stories t attached to them. So we thought, okay, well where would these come from, you know? They would come from

Yeah. A new dictator who moved in who wanted to um Didn't want to look like the last army. So you know, he would sell them to the old ones to us at a good price. That was kind of our background story. And so all right, so you have this name, Banana Republic, and Patricia. I mean the what's what's great is that you both have very different skill sets, right? Like Mel, you're you were a writer and a storyteller

And Patricia, you're an artist and a designer and an illustrator. You've got this really creative mind. And neither of you have any business experience. You're totally useless when it comes to business and management at this point. Totally. And children of the sixties, not with not much sense of the c not not much regard for business. But you can figure that stuff out. But you do have but you do have Some important

Complimentary skills and very different ones. So uh Banana Republic is the name and then did you you designed uh sort of a a logo or a symbol for it, Patricia? Oh yes. Uh um that That brought up the idea of two bananas and a star as a crest. A red star, I think, right? A a red well the bananas were yellow. The background was green and so the star was red. Which um which would look like a you know like a communist coup it could coup um government, you know, right like a symbol. Yes. Okay. So the idea was let's open a shop.

But what was gonna be in the shop? I mean you only had spa short armed Spanish paratrooper shirts. And and before you you did that did you was it was it was it like a chicken and egg thing, did you find the merchandise first or did you find the shop location first? Where we could find some more things because we knew the jobber, this guy. And was he like a tough cookie? Oh, as tough as they get. It was about three hundred pounds. Cigar always in his mouth. Yeah.

But you had to pay him And then get the goods. Yes. That was another thing we hadn't thought about. But yes, but now we The the m the the money was tied up with the store. And we didn't have any money to buy anything. And how did you b how did you get a store?

Right? Oh. I mean you still didn't have that much cash. I mean even with the sale of this stuff, you're let's say you're closer to you know Well we found a store in the back street in Mill Valley that was available Because The

door had to remain unlocked because people had to go through this door to an Aikido studio, which was upstairs. As long as the door remained unlocked, Uh it was available to we could rent it. For how much? Two hundred and fifty. Two fifty a month. Okay, that's pretty good. And is it in a heavily trafficked part of Mill Valley? I mean downtown Mill Valley is very nice and cute and you can walk around and the p people have been there. I was about two or three blocks out of out of the center. So now you've got a store. And and um presumably you start working on getting it ready.

Tell me how you started to then populated with stuff to sell. I mean, did you go back to this guy Zim? That's correct. And we said, you know, we're starting a company. He said, Oh, that's great. Banana Republic. He said, You gave him your business card. I gave him my business card. He looked at it, he saw the he saw the crash.

And he said, Mm-hmm. I said, Well we need some cash because we need to buy some merchandise. And the crest again looked like you were you know, it was like a it was two banana. Yeah. And he said, Two bananas wrapping a story. He said why the red star. Why the red star. We hadn't even thought about that. And I told him I thought it went well with the yellow bananas. It was it was a color choice. It wasn't anything to do with that. But yeah, he said um Oh, well um

There's three C's. He said there's three Cs to get credit. To get credit. Yeah. The first one is a capital. It doesn't sound like you have that. Second is capacity. I don't think you have that either. But the third one is character and I have to admit it, you guys are characters. But he still didn't give us the money. No collaborating. We did not own a place. We had no we didn't own a home. We thought we didn't know. Yeah, well, you know, we were we went.

You know, one thing you might not know is that there's something called Credit. What? Thirty day terms. And you can ask for these terms it's quite common. Net thirty or net sixty. Which means you get the merchandise but you don't have to pay them for thirty or Sixty sometimes nine. So that was the trick. That's how we're gonna do it. Yeah. So we'll get the clothes.

Try to sell'em within thirty days and then pay. But we knew Jim would not. We just knew we had paid him outright the first time, so we knew he was not gonna give us credit. We knew there was but he had told us about this other guy. He asked where else we were buying. And um Mel just kind of cool, it just shrugged his shoulders and he said, Well I hope it's not Shapiro and Sacramento.

Yeah. I'm making up that name, but I won't either So why? He said that son of a bitch. If you don't buy anything from him, he's just like he was a crook. So we went up to Sacramento and we talked Shapiro. And we've convinced him. It was a smaller place.

That but you could see things more clearly. And we were looking for we weren't looking for at that time a lot of the US surplus was poly cotton and we were really into the natural fibers and the good quality Um, so we're looking for more European or Foreign things, and we found a box of belts from Argentina. And um some Swedish gas mask bags. Swedish gas mask bags without the gas mask. A few other things. Shoulder bag that would carry a gas mask. Yes. But the but the gas mask were no longer in it, so they were selling the bags. And the bags were cool.

Yeah, like a purse. So we bring it all up to check out and he said do you have a D and B the Dun and Brad Street report? I said uh the family really doesn't like to uh expose its finances or something like that. And uh He said, Where else do you buy? Yeah. That

Son of a bitch gives you credit? All right. All right. So he gave you credit. Yeah.

But now that you had credit with this guy You could parlay that exactly. Exactly. So we went we next we went to Zims. Yeah. Found We're getting credit from Shapiro. Yeah. Yeah.

what were you finding? I mean, w w everything that you were buying at this point,'cause you had to populate the store. And first of all, I'm assuming that ninety percent of this stuff was really for men because most military gear was made for male soldiers. So first of all, it was basically gonna be a men's clothing store. And It was

It w you were gonna differentiate it from an Army Navy surplus store because Of how you were curating it? Yes, how we would style it. But also I knew that We'd really need half our customers to be women because they would s spend more on clothes than I thought at men at that time. Um I did try playing with the

the shirts, the Spanish Army ch shirts, taking them apart and finding I could put two of them together and make a safari dress, or cut off the sleeves and make a skirt. But we needed a lot more. All right, so just to be clear, I mean I you weren't like initially you bought the Spanish Army shirts, right? Mm-hmm. But then you go back to this guy's in you go to the Shapiro in Sacramento. These are these are surplus dealers.

And You're looking for finished items you could just put on your shelves? Oh, that would be ideal. But we don't really see anything. That I feel is wearable. But then I started

I I I went back and looked through several of the piles and And realize that Wow, these mattress covers are really good linen, you know, could make a good blazer. And um the sheep the sleeping beds. The sleeping out of sheepskin. These would be great vests. I thought you would make good handbags. So you would basically instead of look for clothing that you could sell. You were just looking at the material that you could then pull out and then you yourself would

Well I knew that. Because we didn't have that much time, I'd need to find some help. A seamstress. Yes. And at this time this was not like mass produced in China. I mean this stuff was made in the US, made in the UK. Right. Right. Wool from British woolen mills and Irish linen and you know. American denim, like it was really high quality stuff. Very high quality materials. Okay, but now you've got piles of all this stuff. Now it's one store. Right. How many pieces of each thing? Like, okay, so you see a sheepskin like sleeping bag and you say, Okay, I'm gonna turn this into what? Maybe fifty vests. Oh not from one sleeping bag, but we bought five sleeping bags. But you turn it into a vest. Yes. And and but now you've got a

I mean you're starting up a business. You gotta decorate the store. You gotta make the clothes Right. How did you do that? Well, I hired um I ran an ad, I got one response, This Sicilian Seamstress. Named Anna. and I showed her what we were gonna do.

I started cutting and pinning and she started sewing and we just went Nine hours at a time. Everything that you resolved. Unbelievable. And so that we could have women's st styles too. Mel, you are so lucky that you married Patricia because you'd be screwed if she I mean, you didn't know how to sew. You didn't know how to design you're a great writer. But he knew what to name it.

And you're you know your creative mind, but you're not a Not at all. Not at all. Patricia designed every single every day. I mean you're the luckiest guy in the world. Okay, so what so while Patricia and the seamstress are sewing all this stuff. What what are you doing to

Well, We're gonna have a business. So I was the lawyer. I was the accountant. Yeah. Uh I set the business up. basically by figuring out how to set a business up without hiring any professionals to do that. So you were you were learning how to

As we go along. Uh how to basically stand on the business. And in meantime, were you did you have to do any build out in the store? Oh yes. And the store was this small dark low ceiling place. Um knotty pine walls and ceiling.

And the landlord said we could not paint. So I needed light reflected so I I um Went to the

The meat market and bought rolls of White butcher paper for the ceiling. Um because it was cheap. And then stapled that to the ceiling and painted like big palm fronds to make it look like a jungle, but also the white would reflect some light. You could do all that because you knew how to do that. Well Yeah, it's the artist. And then there there were these big like telephone poles that were holding the ceiling up. And they kind of got in the way of looking, so I thought Well these

are unattractive, let's turn them into palm trees. And so I drilled holes into the top and went to the flower mart and bought big palm fronds and stuck them in the top. And then But I was worried that nobody would notice the store. From the outside, so I painted the front door. Black and white zebra stripes.

So they kinda popped. You wanted it to feel like a jungle. And this was What you are selling Was adventure Gear. Uh not gear, adventure clothing. Like like sort of what Humphrey Bogart might wear. Yes. Yes, exactly. So

You're working on on opening up this shop, right? And I think the idea is you want to get the shop open in time. for the Christmas season because that's and so we're talking about the fall of nineteen seventy eight. Meantime. Help me understand. I think you also decided that you wanted to concurrently with op w with opening up the store.

Build a catalog. Make a catalog. Okay. Yeah. This is the era of catalogs. I mean this is today it's direct to consumer or websites Back in the in in the old days. Catalogs was that's where the gold was. Yes. Trisha's an artist.

I'm a writer. Let's do a catalogue. It was the pre Kinko's days. And you would basically take it down And they would do an instant. Like a mimeograph. Mimeograph kind of thing. But you'd paste it all up. And they photographed it. And they photographed it and they were able to print it from that, like the early Xeroxing. But it w didn't look like Xeroxing.

And so we found a place to do that. I remember we had enough money to print it, but not enough money to stable it. The idea was you would illustrate the clothing. Right. Right, and then you'd have maybe the prices. Yes. And then a little story. Story. Was anybody doing that? Was anybody telling stories? Nobody was naming we were naming every product. Yeah. And you would just tell little stories. Just tell the stories about each article of clothing, like, you know, from the depths of the

You know, the the the jungles of Burma, the the and these were worn by Gurkhas or something like that, you know. Yes. And where where where are you gonna mail them? Well, we didn't t uh any mailing lists, but coming from the media in those days, uh, I realized that the only way we were gonna get this story out without advertising is to sort of see if we can get anybody in the media interested. Yeah. So what we did is we got uh we printed I think five hundred catalogs. Every friend we had put them together and staple them yourself. Staple them at the kitchen table and then because we didn't have enough money to staple them. And hand wrote the addresses. On each catalog. Yes. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. And and who and so who did you identify to send five hundred topics? Well we just we went through mast hits and looked at who the ed who was who we would send to at any at any given place. So you would send them to editors at newspapers mainly in New York. By the way Were you getting Any orders?'Ca'cause I mean what's the hit rate on a catalogue back then? Two two point five percent, two percent. It could

Two percent. But you I think you've made some Even though the cataloks beautiful, you made some major errors. At least at least according to the rules we did. Absolutely. Mel went to the library after and got some books on direct mailing and what you should do. And we found out That we just did everything wrong. You're supposed to have

product on the cover and the back page and maybe page three. We had A leopard print. page and I think an interview with me the on page three. Yeah.

Well, um And the people we sent it to were not mail order buyers. They were just our friends or whoever name we have. So all right, so you send these catalogs out. And around the same time you're ready to open the store. Yes. Okay. And

From what I understand, you open the store Right, I think around Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. Which is obviously a very important shopping day. You are on a sort of a

out of the center of town in Mill Valley on a side street. You've got the shop. You're ready to go. Got the zebra. Painting on the door.

Zebra stripes. Mm-hmm. Day one, Black Friday What happens? Nobody comes in. Nothing. Nothing. There's very few people on the street. A few people going to do their laundry next door. At the laundromat.

A f maybe a few other people going to the health food store up at the corner. But nobody outside of a few glances, nobody is isn't it. Who bought the gas mask bag? Yeah. For how much? I think it was six six six fifty and he gave us I remember he handed me a ten dollar bill and I realized We don't have any.

Cash register. We have we don't how do you wait, I had to dig into my pocket to give a change. We had no idea. So what did you do when nobody w came into the store that day or the adjusting the the outfits that were hanging on the walls and slightly moving open the door. It was cold, but it opened the door and kind of sweep outside hoping to catch someone's eye and just said, Oh, drop in, you know, just um anything we could do to attract people Were you worried? Oh yes. We were starting to worry everything we had was in here.

It was the end of the month. We had to pay rent december first, and thirty Terms, net thirty, that was gonna be due a week after. And um How close were you to I mean were you did you have the cash? We had no cash. We we didn't have any everything was in the store, everything and in the and in the product. So you're got a week to pay What rent and the net thirty on the on the goods.

And what if you didn't have the cash? Wha what would you have done? Would you have to return it or I don't know. We didn't go. We just kind of And then this woman walked in the store. looked around and said, you know I'm from

The independent journal, which is the local newspaper. In Marin County. And said um You know, I'd love to get the story on this place. Can I bring by a photographer? She was back in like two hours. Right. They interviewed us. We tried on different clothes. They took pictures and um Yeah.

That was great. And so I think two days before the end of the month or three days before you're going to be able to do it. We went I think it was a Saturday. that Saturday to open the store in the morning and there was a line of people outside and somebody h hang holds up the S the front page of the style section of the independent journal with a picture, like three quarters of the page of the two of us in Safari Gill. And so all of a sudden you get a crowd.

That presumably they spend Enough to pay the rent and pay Z. And is that it? Is that like now you're a couple of days and then it dies. So wait, it was a week? of really excited excitement people coming in. And then cricket. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. What was the problem? I mean, did did the two of you at night ever say, what are we not doing right? I don't think we ever questioned what we were doing. I don't think it's a very important thing. But we just were trying to think of new ideas for how we could start up sales again. But we had to keep it was a store. So I had to be there you know ten hours a day or something. In case someone came in and wanted to buy something. Failure was not a possibility. We were there we would

They would destroy each other up. I mean, we would make this work one way or another and we were determined to do it. It's uh you know, there whatever we did, there were no mistakes, you just keep going. Anybody who called, I'd answer the phone of course Banana Republic and if they said oh wrong number, I said Oh, well Banana Republic you'd just I'd try and engage them in conversation. One day You got a wrong number early in the mor you thought was a wrong number in the early morning, you pick up the phone and she s in in and he in in in this guy says Hi, this is John Gambling from W O R Radio in the Tri State Area and you're on the air. Who who was that? W O R N New York. And he got a copy of your catalog somehow? I we s yeah, he was on a he he somehow or another we sent him a copy because we sent the radio stations, television stations.

Anybody any media we could think of. And he got one. And he said, I've been telling my listeners about you know reading them parts of the catalog and I have a few questions for you. What happened to those Italian Camouflage jacket's without the hood. Several questions and I went on about

Mostly quoting the catalogue. Yeah. And at the end he said, And so What about anybody who's More interested and would like to get a catalogue. You know, one of these catalogues.

Well, you just have them send a dollar to PO box seven seven four, Mill Valley. No, nine four nine four two. And it was like thank you, Patricia from the That was it. And then a couple days later, did you start to get letters? Sacks of mail. Sacks of mail.

With a dollar. One of these The post guy comes in dragging these huge canvas plants. Every single one of them had a single dollar bill in them. And and so Anne amazingly

You'cause you were sending the catalogs out not Charging people. Of course you needed them to get the catalogue. Now you were getting paid we charge.'Cause the catalog probably cost you about a dollar to make. Oh less than that. I know it was seven. We knew we were gonna do it. We sent them free the first four hundred. But we did with the idea. So now you get all these dollar bills, plus you can send out the catalogue. But now you got a mailer business. Yeah, we got a and an even bigger mailing list that's growing. That's amazing. So but the store in general's still pretty sleepy.

So kinda quiet. Yes. Yes. After that radio station in New York did a profile, did you start to get other media organizations? Then there was a the fashion editor of the Los Angeles. Mary Lou Lou Times who basically Said. These short in Banana Republic, the Banana Republic is they're fan they're perfect for this summer. And those short were

And so she says this is the short This is the short for the summer. And were these shorts that you were making or were these No no no these were surplus shorts. There were a short that we found in Zim's warehouse. Um one of our trips over there as we're going through I see Out of the corner of my eye, this pile of khaki that almost looks like the same fabric as his original jacket that he brought back from Australia. And so I went over

And picked up This short And It had two buckles hanging off the side, a really wide waistband. They were fantastic. Oh my god. You could see they were fantastic. And so

And so you Pati Right. I think gasped a bit when I yeah, I said, Okay, we'll take them all. And the LA Times fashion writer calls them in her column.

The shorts of the summer. But they were styled. When I did the drawing roll them up and with some clever little phrases about them correctly. So women could wear them. So women could wear them, belt them tight. And um And so she caught the style of it and uh They sold out in like two weeks. So you bought these for like two bucks a pop or something. I think they were two fifty. Two fifty. And you sold them for

Fifteen. Sixteen dollars. Okay, now. There's a lot going on, right? You've got catalog business and you're trying to grow and all these things and from what I I understand. Patricia, you were getting

pretty overwhelmed'cause you were Mm. Making making a lot of the clothing and running the store and sending out the the you know, and doing the illustrations and the catalogue was a lot of work Yeah.

I think you guys were also I mean, you're a married couple, you w didn't have kids yet. But um you were fighting too, right? We didn't really mean To blame each other for it, but we were both just really stressed and not sleeping enough. From you know, dawn to dusk working. We were always working.

Trying to keep this thing going. Yeah. I don't know, because we didn't really disagree, we trusted each other with whatever we did totally. And we were just cranky. Because we were tired. And I I remember once

Um I remember going to the East or San Francisco to the printer to put out Uh Our latest catalogue. And I hadn't

I hadn't slept in like three nights, I think. I was just up round the clock, just trying to get it all pasted up and ready to go and then supervise it on the printing presses. I was driving home across the Golden Gate Bridge and all of a sudden I hear this honk I wake up. And realise I've veered into the oncoming traffic. You were falling asleep. I was falling asleep. I was so sleep starved and I went home and I just broke down. And I just told Mel, you know, I I just I I we can't I can't do all this.

We can't do the catalogue and the store and make the clothes. I just can't I can't do this. Yeah. All we knew is that it's it's for years we ate from the dollars in the envelope. We would basically take open enough envelopes. Kept it going.

I the idea was to keep it going. Somehow or another we were gonna figure this thing out and make it work. Okay, so you go to Mel and you're saying We need to stop the catalog. It's too much. Yeah, the catalog adds a level to this business that I just can't manage. Meantime, you you you know that the catalog business is your really best hope. Yes. How did you respond? Why don't you take a day off?

not want really to shut this thing down. You I knew we couldn't go backwards. We knew that we we needed at this point we needed help. We definitely needed help. I mean this wasn't these were in these days. But you were able to visualize well this if this little store can bring in this much. If we got a store in a more populated area like San Francisco, we could

That would make up the difference because we'd have The margins. p probably the same margins there, but at a bigger volume. And that'll get us through this. And so you said To me.

We need to open another store. And I'm there saying, Oh my God. When we come back in just a moment. Patricia and Mel get a very attractive business offer. that they can't turn down. Then

wind up regretting it. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1983, and despite the fact that Mel and Patricia are totally overwhelmed with their first store, Mel manages to convince Patricia to open a second one. This time in San Francisco. Same safari motif, same zebra stripes on the outside.

but also some of the same problems. So one of the challenges of your business was that E pretty much every most everything you were selling was a one of a kind, especially the things that you were remanufacturing,'cause you were buying weird articles of clothing for the fabric. You're turning them into articles of clothing. But that was it.

Once they were out, that was it. I mean, which is exciting. But it's challenging if somebody comes in and we were selling something that was not uh you couldn't you couldn't replenish it. Surplus the surplus we were selling largely was from the second world war. And it was still around in the early seventies. uh in the mid in in the late seventies, but do

We were Fast depleting it. And we realized, Whoa what are we gonna do? We have we have a whole business that's built around this. So You start to think about let's m make our own line. Let's just design this. I'm assuming you were putting a banana republic label and you were sewing that into everything. Now you want to scale it up. Did you start to explore potential Well we what we had to do, we first we tried to find manufacturers who were making things that were similar

And by the way, this is the early eighties. I think seventy percent of clothing sold in America was made in America at the time. Yes. Fatigue's for the army in the south and and find that If we didn't change anything. With them they could make us a small

Yeah. Maybe like in North Carolina or Georgia or places like that. But you still need capital to finance that. Did you have the capital? Well, I think we were we were pouring every penny that we had back into doing that. So yes, to the not to not to do it on any scale. But enough to make the clothes that we needed. to make. And we had great credit by then because

Wait. Paid everything within thirty days. Or sixty days. We learned that that was the trick. And by the way, how did the San Francisco s Store. Do compare to the Did really well.

It was like three times. Three times. Just cause it's San Francisco that's critical mass. Yes. Who were the kinds of people going into your shop in San Francisco? Because It was a very particular style. I mean Safari and travel adventure gear, khakis. Browns, olive tones.

I mean who were who were the people coming in? Well I think We originally created the business for other people like us, ourselves. I mean we we really were trying to sell to other creative people. And uh writers, artists.

But I think it went caught on. It went beyond the I mean it it went to everybody. People it was amazing how many people. They were kids to grandmas. And also there was a um reaction against how much polyester was coming into fashion. And we sold only pure fibers. Yes. You were selling wool, cotton, cotton, silk, rayon, anything that was real. Yes. You your prices were were like sort of uh middle between the sort of middle and up uppermost tiers. It was like m low middle and lower. I mean, we didn't know. I mean in those days we uh we were selling it. But double what they would sell for in a surplus. But it was still affordable. It was affordable. Right.

All right, so you've got the store in San Francisco. And it's doing pretty well. And in your mind, I mean, did you have any time to kind of reflect on what what was the next step or I mean was it just let's

a real estate developer who opened uh shopping centers and he was a a customer. He loved the brand. He said I wanna put these

Banana Republican I think this is merit share. Sure. Okay, sure. Yeah. And uh so Merritt was a customer who came in frequently and I he's a very uh lovely man and we we we liked him. And he said uh I I said, Merritt, I can't we're we we're doing everything. We're too busy. We don't even have time to figure out how to Yeah.

And uh he he said uh he kept He come back again and again and again and I think one day he came back and he said and it was just a bad day. I said, No. Not only will I never open a store in your shopping center, I'd sell this company to Mar if I could.

Do you wanna talk to Don Fisher? Who at that point was the Uh owner of the gap. The Fisher family.

But basically he's the guy who started the gap. I said, Sure. Let's talk to him. So

Before we get into this part of the conversation. It sounds like I mean You were just it sounds like that's the kind of response of somebody who was Just overwhelmed. Yes. Overwhelmed. Totally overwhelmed.

It's we're four and we're almost f four years into it at this point. I think. We didn't ever we never put the initial systems in place. The business just kept happen so fast. That we could never stop for long enough to just sort it all out so that it all could work. And we didn't Yeah.

Uh We didn't even know where to go. Who could run this sort of thing? Ф ви част висо.

Paying the bills, getting the salaries, getting the getting the job, getting the the orders in the meal we just we didn't have time to withdraw. Yeah. And figure this out. And both of us were working around the clock. Alright, so you kind of offhandedly say, I'd sell the business before I do this, and this guy Merritt sure share says, Let me introduce you to Don Fisher.

CEO of of Gap. Which by that point. in early early eighties was it wasn't what it is today, but it was already a pretty significant company. Yeah, they already had five hundred stores. They were public. They were a publicly traded company and the New York Stock Exchange. And he had started with a single store in nineteen sixty eight, I think, on Ocean Avenue.

Um selling jeans and records. But Fisher wanted to come meet you. Yeah. So he comes to the store in San Francisco and you meet him and and what did you first of all, was he did you get the sense that he was interested right away? He was fascinated. He can he went through that store reading very carefully every hang tag, looking very carefully at every single garment. Right,'cause we had the story on a hang tag on every item. Which fascinated him. You actually named the clothing. And you wrote about this clothing and

This and what's this and how's that and and uh I remember him picking up We had these Falkland bathing suits for men. The British remember the British war in the Falklands in the nineteen eighties when When

England invaded Falklands. For British soldiers. Swim trunks.

What? And um so he looks uh uh Don picks one up and looks at it and he says Wow, do your customers really buy buy these? And uh I remember our store manager said, Well, I haven't seen anyone come out of the dressing room wearing one lately, but They are buying they're like a piece of history.

And I could tell he was impressed with her. He was kind of blown away by the the craziness of this item item. I'm fascinated. Yeah. So how did Don approach you about seeing if you were interested in selling?

I think we we went lunch. And In the midst of the conversation we realize he's He says, Well how much do you want for the business?

Yeah. What? What? You couldn't answer that question. Oh it was a couple of million dollars. It wasn't very much. That's pretty good. Two stores, couple of million bucks. Nineteen eighty three, it's not bad. So that's w we did we were thrown back, you know. We looked at each other. I know. We never had a shower. We just basically took the money out of the cash register and went to dinner with it. But he said, How's how's a hundred and fifty sound? And we thought, does he mean for both of us? Yep.

Do we share it? Yeah, but we didn't get it. He would give you a check and you you were set for life or at least for the next ten years or whatever. We want it out. We wanted to go back to painting and writing and we want it out. And so he took us right down the path. And then at the last minute, um

He took it to his board. And the board set. You can't buy this company. There's no you can't buy this company. It's that it's not gonna really It's a trend or a strength. Yeah. And he so he basically backed.

almost backed out of the deal at that at that last minute and that point we had had a huge I mean the accountant who was figuring this out with us. We had bills that we had to pay, accountant bills and legal bills and other kinds of bills for all this negotiation it was just Frustrating. We were frustrated. We were spent. But he but Don still wanted to buy the business.

Even though his board said no. So this one we went over to his house, right? I wanna buy this business. But there's one thing. I see. He said You need to run it.

I so no. Yeah. No. I don't want to sell my business. I'm not looking for a job. No, no. Yeah. Basically that was my reaction. It's like, Oh my God, after all this, this is where we are.

But he said. I will as long as you're profitable. I will Completely funded and you're on your own. I'm not gonna tell you what to do. You have complete creative control. You won't see me. It's your business. Yeah. I will give you

Every dollar you need to grow this business. As long as you keep it profitable. And you agree to that deal. Mm-hmm. Reluctantly.

I think Patricia wanted it more than I did. I was Sort of a maybe. But I thought Well, gee, if all of a sudden we have the money to do this, to design our own line to

Um build the stores we want. We could We could um we could have fun. Yeah and we could travel. So I we agreed. Yes, one yes and one maybe.

Banana Republic Board. Decided to sell to the gap. Yeah. So nine so nineteen eighty three You become employees.

Of the gap. No employees of Banana Republic. It's own by the yeah. I got it. Okay. But but you guys are still running the company and and and with gaps muscle, you're able to start working with factories to m to make clothes

For you. So you don't have to make them yourself. Yes. And then and then of course you start Opening more stores. Right. Like I think like I think the first one I think was in in Palo Alto at at the Stanford Mall, which is uh pr pretty fancy, pretty upscale.

Um and and Patricia, you still got to design the store, right? Yes. First before we go down there, I remember the requirements for the site. That you had to have an approved color for the awning and no neon and Um very low key front. And I remember that. It was it was so it was suffocating to just read this thing. Pages and pages of restriction. Which she did. And so I

I did a drawing. Of A jeep coming through the front window. Um a tin roof with a giraffe. head sticking out at the top and two palm trees growing in the ground.

And um That was gonna be the facade. That was gonna be the facade and a place that was two doors away from Tiffany's. So we decided we were just gonna do what we do. But you didn't have to paint zebra stripes anymore. Now you could really hire people to make like a giant elephant or a giraffe or a y jeep. Yes. Okay, so you bring this this fancy mall in at Stanford.

It was almost this was exactly opposite of anything that they could possibly want in this mall. And we sh Show her the drawing. The woman across the table, I remember her name, Rosary McAndrew. She's the design director. We slip the drawing across the table to her. We're sitting there looking. There's a minute of absolute silence. And she looks up at me and she says

I love it. I love it! I absolutely love it! We look at each- What? Can that

Changed everything. Yeah. That changed everything because then the next thing we several months later the store opened. There were lines there. It was the highest grossing store in the same in in in the mall. Wow. Everybody came into this st it it was the it was everything in these malls. We started getting calls from malls all over the country. They just can you build one here? Can you build one there? It it would because malls, as you know, are percentage rent. Yeah.

So The more money we made, the more money they made. So where was the first location you opened outside of California? I think it was New York. I think it was New York. Not the not the uh fifty ninth and Lex store yet, but Were you opening a year after the acquisition? We were opening fifteen, ten or fifteen stores a year.

Wow. So it really was By the second or third year, yeah. It was fun for a while. I loved designing the stores. I love the possibilities of it. Every store had to be different. We had different designs. Some were embassies, some were Safari camps, some were we were just designing whatever we could in the genre. But no two stores would be the same. And you were the CEO? I was yes, I was the president. And you were the head designer Chief Creative Office. And so the uh really this this proposition was working out.

Well, I mean uh by nineteen eighty six or so, I think I mean you had dozens of stores. You were doing Yeah. uh by one estimate, like sixty million dollars in sales, which is Pretty great.

Uh but also at a certain point I guess some tension started to emerge between you and and the higher ups. At the gap. I think may have come to a head around nineteen eighty seven when when the stock market crashed.

Yes. We had this huge conference. at the Claremont Hotel in Oakland where we brought all the store managers and regional managers from across the country and we were celebrating and the company and In the m in the middle of uh a break I walked out and I looked at a paper.

newspaper the shop there in the hotel. And it said, Dow Falls twenty two percent. This was Black Tuesday. Black Monday. Black Monday, sorry. Ninete seven.

Yes. It so happens that Two or three weeks before that, the gap. had reported earnings. and they missed earnings and the stock had taken its own dive. Yeah. So

It was already down substantially, and then came. Black Monday. Yeah. It went down further. And suddenly They were

The gap became interesting. And Banana Republic. Everything was going fine. We were doing quite well. But the gap suddenly became

Uh edgy. Don became a little nervous. Uh th they were they didn't quite know Where things were going. And so we were beginning to contribute to earnings. And they

Uh began to have some Ideas. About how we could squeeze more Earnings. Yeah. out of the

Company. And it it created some friction. Right. Okay. So what so what were some of the You know, as they started to look into your business and and started to presumably say, Hey, you know, we think maybe you should expand out beyond adventure and Safari and travel gear, is that what they were saying? Well s that was part of it. They were two different things. I think the the one was the the way we were merchandising. The way we were merchandising. There was a shirt we sold, a bomb an Indian cotton shirt that was beautiful. We called it the Bombay shirt.

And we sold tens of thousands of these shirts all the time in various different colors, and they were doing spectacularly well. But it's at a certain point Patricia said enough. other companies were copying the shirt and selling it for lower prices. In fact there was a whole

The Limited started a line called Out Back Red. That was really a copy of banana at a lower price. And s and so They were copying a lot of styles, but especially this shirt. But I was saying

Okay, now this the time to stop the shirt. Because to wear something that's being sold cheaper by another company in cheaper fabric. So so I um

Bob Fisher was running our merchandising company. Bob Fisher was uh Don't Fisher's son. Okay. And he um was a really By the books data driven. Merchandiser. Yeah.

So He said, Well you're crazy because you can't How can you Discontinue one of our best selling items. Yeah.

I explained to him that this was It was a best selling item, but it wasn't gonna continue to be a best selling item. And I knew that And um that's something that's driven by intuition. Which he did not get, and so there was a tension between us. and attention that was kind of

Breaking up the spirit of the Company. And was there I mean Uh, from what I understand, some investors were also raising questions Some of them were saying hey, this is what you guys are selling is a trend. And they were looking at Banana Republicans saying this stuff is just a fad and it's you it's not gonna people aren't gonna buy this stuff. Exactly. Yeah, they're saying it's too hot. And and it's and it's too wild.

And Uh uh we were now grown to a point where we were not a Data did matter.

Uh but we we weren't entirely reverent of data. We thought that there would other things that we had to be considered in our to intuition we had this

Company was part of our DNA. is part of our fiber. We knew when something was right and when something was not right. And so we were getting suggestions when first of all we had an agreement that would they would stay out of our business. Yeah. We were now getting sort of more and more urgent suggestions that we should make changes that didn't feel correct to us. I mean, Don came into the office one day and said, you know

I think it's time uh i i that you're not gonna be reporting to me anymore, you're gonna be reporting to Mickey Drexler. Uh and just to explain, um Mickey had been brought in earlier. uh by the Fisher family to do some some major rebranding. at the gap and and he he had just become the president of the company and then eventually become CEO and just kind of kind of a legendary guy in that in that industry.

Uh but I guess y you didn't w want to work under him, you said no. I said no. And our COO at the time, his name was Ed Strobin, was a real classic merchant. And uh the moment he saw Mickey Drexler, he said Beware. Hm.

He's a grabber. And I think what was going on is that Mickey was eyeing the The success of banana. And uh wanted to get his hands on it. And somehow or another

That happened. No. Mickey's not here to defend himself, and this is not a documentary show. We're just taking your oral account. So I so so I will just say in in his defense and not even in his defense, but to say that You know, he was probably from his perspective, he thought I could do a better job and I want to take over and and He does have he does have a pretty good record, a successful record in running big retail businesses. And some were bet better than others and of course

You know, he's he's he's considered later by the came later. But he's considered to be a pretty important guy in the apparel industry, and I just wanna say that You know, to be in his own. In his defense. But but I understand you did not want to work this was your brand that you started. You did not want to work for some Yeah. Civil.

Decided route. Well at that point, yes, because this isn't what we bought into. Yeah. Um we started this business To travel. we started this business to uh f more not not to become rich

But to be free. Yeah. And we did free. And we were free. And we're troubled. We were free.

We had made enough money to be Not Independently wealthy? And that was enough.

Enough is enough. And so You believe. this company you had at this point you had a Two kids.

Two little ones, right? And And you know. Banana Republic is now You wash your hands of it.

And it goes its own way, and you guys And I should say that it went for years. They they realized they made a terrible mistake. They had no idea the devotion the the the the the the customers had to the original. And for years they just kept bringing one crew after another after another in and the the company just kept flailing for years and years and years. Yeah.

Today they're sort of resurrecting it and they're they're they're going back to the tradition originally, which is interesting, but they're bringing back some of that event. But it still it became like an office clothing company. Yeah. From from what I understand. In nineteen eighty eight, you guys decided to focus on being parents for a couple of years. And what a gift.

Yes. I mean you had enough money to, you know, as you say, not you know be fabulously, you know, wealthy, but enough money to actually have a a a comfortable life and to not have to worry about, you know The paycheck? At least for for some time.

And uh you could be with your kid. Yes. And then you had another child that I think but Mm. And did you think that you would do another business, or did you think that's the one that you can do. You weren't looking to do another business. No, we weren't looking to do another business.

I was I I Had this sense that when I left First of all, the whole thing was about ten years from start to finish for us. Seventy eight to eighty eight, yeah. Seventy eight to eighty eight. And I felt At the end. That I had somehow

succeed achieve succeed achieve succeed achieve and I thought Well. I wanna just back up from this. And so I went away to a uh I'd never done anything like this in my life, uh of a Passana meditation. Silent meditation.

I went away to this retreat. The rules were no reading, no writing, you sit and meditate. for next year. And it was shocking. to me to w my mind goes so fast to ever have to go through something like that. And by the second or third day I was sitting there and I had the worst headache of my life.

You you were going through ca caffeine withdrawals? Caffeine, with deep caffeine. Because there's no coffee. No coffee. No coffee and only herbal tea. at this place. And so I thought my God. I never want to have a headache like this. So I spent the rest of the meditation dreaming about a tea company.

that I would start T. How did that it just came into your mind in that salad? If coffee did this to me, I'm not drinking it anymore. And I happen to mention it to s uh I went to a br uh at that point I was uh on the board of a group called the Social Venture Network, which is about socially responsible businesses in those days that was a new concept. And I went to a conference and I somehow found myself on the plane with a fella who was there And he sort of

talking to him and I say he said, Well w what would you do if you did another thing? I said, Well I'd do a T business, you know, and I started to I found myself talking about it and getting excited about it. And I sort of dove in trying to learn about it and understand it. And so I decided let's start Let's let's do this cost st let's start the Republic of T And You were gonna call it the Republic of Tea from the day for the Banana Republic. Were you worried that Banana Republic would come after you? Well Don called. Don called. As soon as he heard.

Yeah, I'm not sure. Should I sue you or should I not? We had a nice relationship and he he understood that we were not gonna sell clothes at the Republic of Tee, and he he was okay with that. And you wanted to do Full leaf tea. Yeah. And to have it And so I'm assuming once again

you're recruiting the best illustrator you know, which is your wife who's pregnant with our daughter. To start to think about designing what this would look like. Right. Because you wanted it to stand out on the shelf. You know. Just like our clothes would stand out. How did you finance it? Did you self finance it at this point? Uh yes, it was wholesale. We weren't gonna do retail, it was wholesale. It was another business altogether that we hadn't done before.

Um The fun of it was as it was with Banana Republic was was inventing it. Yeah. Starting it.

This is where the the the excitement came from uh for us. As it began to grow. Grow a little bit. It was back to the same old problem which is basically you have to

buy the tea before you sell the tea. So you're always short. Money. You always need more money. And at this point our Our um Our our son was just a couple of years old.

My daughter was on the way. My daughter had just been born. And we did not want to plunge. Back into that business. We said no. So I I I guess Y you only kept the business for like

th three years and then you sold it to a a a a businessman a and a beverage guy, like a guy who who was in wine and and and sparkling water. Right. And and this was Ron, this was Ron Rubin. Yes. Анлайк Банана Републік і стаї реверен. Yeah. The Republic of T stayed reverent to the original concept. We really love that. I mean the tea business, um Mm.

We we it the we're very proud of what uh the the Ron and his son uh have done with that business. And they still own it. It has the hands. Authentic is Every pretty you know, decent sized brand. Yeah, it's always very you know, he's told me many times I

I said, Well in a couple of years this thing is gonna be and I named a number and he said, Well, we've exceeded that many, many times over, so He's a very happy new owner. I from from what I understand and from like the the conversations the brief conversations we've had before this interview Um you've been You know, sort of

Yeah, some kind of Retire isn't the right word, but you have chosen to live a life that I think is actually the kind of the dream. I mean You're still married, you're about to hit

fifty years of marriage. You've got two kids who uh your daughter's a designer, your son's an artist. Uh she's a fashion designer, she's got her own her own label that she started. Um and you guys You know, have been able to do to what you want, which is to get to have the freedom to travel and to uh you paint, Mel, and obviously Patricia, you paint and

Um I mean it sounds like a pretty awesome Outcome. We're very lucky. We're very lucky. I mean you didn't

You didn't walk away with billions of dollars or hundreds of millions or whatever, you know, but that but you need to deal with all that money except have problems. I mean who who needs that kind of money? Yeah. We have each other and we have a good relationship with our kids. And it's just a delight. T. Go through our days together.

Being through fifty years of this, you go through so many Phases. But I would say I'm more in love with my wife now than I've ever been. Love that.

And I'll go. Did all You gotta go with my husband. You gotta say that. Yeah. Now that he said it. Yeah. She's gotta say that. We'll have trouble when we walk out of here. Well when you think about

Um You know, everything that you achieved and you know, and all these amazing brands that you've been part of and and and and created Um With Patricia, how much of your of where you got to do you think has to do with the work and your intelligence and how much do you attribute to luck?

Oh. Oh, I would say. Mostly luck. We say go with the flow. But don't forget to row.

I mean in a sense I I Being in the right place, being born at the right time. Mm. I think that's that's really true. But just on the side of luck.

I wanna add that I think you can encourage luck. By if you're willing to see that there's really assets and liabilities there really is a silver lining of some kind in every crowd. I guess I'm just an optimist, but

There's If there's There's always a possibility to work with, at least in our More lucky, sheltered world. You know.

Lessons. I'm we talk about it meditation retreats and what comes Is that The biggest epiphany was that not knowing

is the greatest strength. Because then you're open to everything. Mm-hmm. That's Patricia and Mel Ziegler. Co founders of the Republic of T.

and Banana Republic. By the way, their original store in Mill Valley, California is no longer a Banana Republic. It's now a rugstore. But if you're nostalgic for vintage banana, you can always check out the website AbandonedRepublic. It was put together by old school Banana Republic fans.

And on the site, you can find the old catalogs and sketches of the original clothing, like the Spanish paratrooper shirt, the Egyptian cotton short sleeve bush jacket, and of course the authentic Bombay Bowler. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show, and as always, it's free. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, sign up for my newsletter at guyroz.com. This episode was produced by Carrie Thomson with music composed by Ramteen Arabui. It was edited by Neba Grant. research help from Lia Agudello.

and Engineering by Quasey Lee. Our production staff also includes JC Howard, Sam Paulson, Catherine Cypher, Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, John Isabella Chris Masini and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening.

to how I built this.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.