YouSaid · the spoken record

George Zimmer

lines on the record: 66
first: 2019-04-15
most recent: 2019-04-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Territory. I didn't think that they understood the idea of discounting, which was really more in the northeast and to some degree in Chicago, but had not gotten into the south. And so I decided to relocate from Dallas to Houston and open the first men's warehouse.”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then when they didn't sell, he told me that he knew my father was the owner and he'd like to return the coach. And I said, well, we don't take anything back. And he reminded me that I could pick up the phone and call my father and get it done, which I did. And we took back about 400 sport coats. He promised that he would give me a large order going forward. And when I came in to get that order a few months later, he informed me that they were dropping me. So I had about a five-hour drive from Houston back to Dallas. And I decided that they didn't really understand how to retail apparel, not only in Foley's, but throughout my”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Called Foley's. It was a federated department store. And I went in and sold the boys buyer some sport coats that were not in my opinion the correct sport coats he should have bought, but I was too new in the job to speak up and let him make the order because it was in order.”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I traveled the territory, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and the largest account in my territory was in Houston, which is where I ultimately started men's warehouses.”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go to department stores, specialty stores. By this time he had a thriving business, and he was doing well, and I thought it was an opportunity to continue my apparel career And I liked living in Dallas. It was fun.”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I did not. I found many factories that made samples, which I dutifully sent back to New York, but we didn't find any factory that we could make a deal with. And so after about six months, I came home. And when I got back to New York, it was the 72 presidential election. And then I actually got a job in the McGovern campaign working in Chicago in the summer of 72 in charge of what was called grassroots fundraising. And I remember I moved to Texas on Election Day 1972. My father offered me a job in Dallas repping his line in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana.”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, my job was to find factories, give them samples to make. Then send them back to New York and be sort of the middleman. He was making the decisions. Of course, it was always about negotiating a price, the exact fabric. And I lived there for about six months.”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was presentable, I told my father, when he told me he wasn't, making the trip that I didn't really understand his business well enough to do this on my own, at which he said George, they're going to love you in Asia because you're my eldest child, your number one son, and they're going to love the fact that you're doing this because I can't. So I would get up every morning at about five o'clock in the morning and start studying because I literally didn't know much about the manufacturing of clothing. And I would study from usually five to eight, including going to the breakfast restaurant in the hotels, which were quite glamorous. And he was right. Lot of people were very excited to talk to the number one son who had made such a long trip Because his father could make it.”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. It was called Ida Wild then, and it was Pan Am one flying from New York through Fairbanks, Alaska to Tokyo. And then I was switching and flying down to Osaka.”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, well, he ended up asking me in late seventy one since I had not gotten a job of any note I was substitute teaching, and my father, I think, recognizing his son was in danger of drifting away to become a permanent hippie said to me, Why don't the two of us go to Asia because he wanted to look into manufacturing there instead of the greater New York area? And when I came back to New York to make that trip, he informed me that something had come up and he couldn't do it, but he wanted me to go in his stead, which I did. And really that's the beginning of my business experience.”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Inexpensive boys outerwear like what we called snorkel jackets Out here they would be called ski jackets, nylon, shells, He also made more of an upscale boy's raincoat, and when John John Kennedy was standing at his father's funeral in that famous photo layer. Salutes. He's wearing my father's raincoat.”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, when I went to college, his business was in its ascendancy, but he never really mastered the art of making a profit in business. Although he did make small profits, he never really, in my opinion, took advantage of what he might have been able to achieve.”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was fantastic. I've often felt that the time that you spend in college, if you're fortunate enough, can be the most positive years of your life. For me, I went to college as a sheltered young Jewish boy from New York. And because of what was going on in the streets, I became much more of a sophisticated and politically aware person”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The truth is that I did not, but I think that because of her consistency in the way she handled this issue, that it did enter my subconscious, and by the time I got to college, and certainly after college, I felt very confident about almost anything I tried.”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mother was a truly remarkable woman. And she had both amazing strengths and qualities that made us all proud. And then she had her own demons, many of them connected to having been an orphan which does carry its own baggage. But what she did for me, which is something that I didn't appreciate when she was alive, but what she instilled in me was this notion that I was a special boy and I would be able to do anything I chose to do in life. And I must say I've been a legend in my own mind for decades. And as I think we all know now, confident. Is a positive quality.”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I knew that something wasn't right, and the next day they said that by unanimous consent they decided to replace me and George, we've put your furniture in storage. And I remember thinking my furniture and my knick-knacks 40 years of stuff that I had accumulated in 50 cartons were put in storage. And in the moment it felt like, well, damn, if all these people who are my friends don't want me as their leader anymore, then why do I want to be their leader”
2019-04-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT