I stopped in at the Gap the other day. This wasn't as easy as it sounds. In the county where I live, with three major malls, there is only one Gap.
This isn't a small, backwoods town. There's a brand new mall with plenty of other stores, like J. Crew, Guess and Banana Republic.
So I made a stop at the mall with the Gap, mainly to try on a certain dress that's gotten quite a lot of talk over at Fashionista.
But the dress (which is cute, and would work for someone else) did afford me the opportunity to spend some time in the Gap, which I rarely do and I got to see exactly why the store is having such an identity crisis.
In a good store, there will be different "stories" to tell in different parts of the store. Sometimes this is based on color -- we'll tell the orange story here, and the blue one there -- and sometimes it's based on style -- put the work story in one corner and the weekend story toward the front. Gap's stories seemed to be based on...um...yeah...
In the front of the store, there were a lot of basics. T-shirt kinds of things, drawstring-bottom pants, I think. Most of the stuff was on sale (the pants were $59.50, down to $8.97). Then there were some accessories, a table of work pants, a few racks of dresses. Next came clearance, and then in the back corner, there was denim. It wasn't fun or easy to shop and it was difficult to figure out exactly what was on sale. I wanted to pick up some camisoles, because you can never have too many, and I couldn't find them and didn't know where to look.
Part of the problem was that the store was a mess. That's not entirely the Gap's fault, just the management's fault. But it was particularly glaring, considering I was the only customer in the store, for most of my visit. It was after work and there were plenty of people in other stores I visited, so it wasn't a timing issue, it was a Gap issue.
After perusing the store, I did grab the aforementioned dress and a pair of drawstring-bottom pants. I thought about another pair of work pants, but didn't feel like searching for my size, since the pile was out of order. I ended up buying the pants. And that's it.
Stockwatch: GPS up 0.63 points to 18.35.
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2 comments:
I agree with the denim thing - this is why my new jeans are from American Eagle, instead (and they fit me in the ass, too!)
Reid, you point out an interesting consequence of Gap's former incarnation as a "basics" store. So many other stores popped up and did the basics even better. Keep reading for an upcoming post about Gap and its competition!
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