Gap CEO Art Peck knows there is considerable work to be done to turn things around at the company, which announced this week that it will close 175 of its 675 North American stores in the next few years.
Returning to keen customer engagement and customer experience can lead to stellar brand loyalty that existed in the past.
“I want to underline that word consistency,” Peck said during the company’s 2015 Investor Meeting Conference on Tuesday, according to Seeking Alpha. “It’s a critical issue for us and it’s been our Achilles heel as an organization. And we are heads down across all of our businesses focusing on improving the consistency of our performance, day-after-day, week-after-week, season-after-season. Gap is a great brand, a relevant brand, a power house brand around the world, and it deserves its rightful place inside this portfolio and for our customers, and we are working very hard to it back to where it needs to be.”
Working together as a team is crucial to any future success, Peck said.
“Where we have gone wrong often times as a company is when we have put the burden of running these brands season after season on the shoulders of an inspired individual,” he said. “That’s not the model to success. These are businesses, global in scale, that require highly collaborative teams to be successful. We need great design. We need great creative talent. But we need that talent to be part of a highly collaborative team every season.”
Peck, who was hired late last year, despises store closings.
“Let me just say it to you, I hate closing stores, I hate the idea of closing stores, because I hate the idea of denying our customer the opportunity to shop in their favorite Gap store,” he said. “I hate the idea of conceding market share. We will do everything we can do to claw back every dollar that we can. But let’s be realistic, some of that, some of those dollars and some of that wallet is going to go to the competition.”
Peck said Gap has had its “moments of glory,” but they are not followed by “consistent moments of glory. Value is a critical component today. You just look at it across the consumer, across the customers around the world, value is a critical component. And it’s critical at Old Navy, it’s critical in our outlet business, it’s critical in Intermix.”
Jeff Kirwan, Global Brand President, Gap stressed two main themes: people and products.
“We have to have an expression of our brand that was consistent across digital, across our physical stores, how we talk socially, and from our marketing campaigns,” Kirwan added. “So the foundation is built. And we are just operationalizing it and trying to create more value as time goes on. And the full power of the product pipeline is going to evolve over time and I think we will see it really starting to show up in 2016.”