YouSaid · the spoken record

Mickey Drexler

lines on the record: 57
first: 2025-02-04
most recent: 2025-02-04
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

“Mensch is in Yiddish. Mensch is like a nice person, normal. Hamisha down to earth. And I like talking to people in a parallel way and not, I don't talk down to people because I appreciate who I am and what I do. Now, no one escapes. You know, I go through certain mood issues, of course. I'm always trying to better myself, but I think success is just not about money. Most people might say that. But you have to be, I'm very pleased with what I've done, more so over the last few years, because I have changed people's lives. I had a reunion two weeks ago last week with the Field team at GAP, you know, 15, 20 of us. And they all thanked me and they said they made their lives much better. That's success.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think what it looks like is a couple of things. If you can impact people's lives in a positive way, that to me is the best sign of success. And of course, and if I could also be very pleased with myself, that's another sign. But I think The biggest compliments I get are from people, you know, we had that, I think you knew about the Gap Reunion. Did you mention that to me? No. 150 or 60 people. Ken Pilate, who used to work with me. And I am. I don't success, it's not being rich. It's not even being rich, because I know successful scientists or successful whatever. But I think it's impacting people's lives. My biggest compliment, I say this, I've said it on CMBC is when I'm called a mench, you know what that word is?”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Timeless and it's whatever I wear. And it's things, and I didn't learn this, everything I buy. And it's internal to me. You know, it's like if someone wears something, oh, that's the guy with the purple shirt, or that's the car with the egony hubcaps. I like discrete I like style and I like a uniform. That's what I do and I wear the same Alex Mill, a slub t-shirt blue every day.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Miss Jeans never go out of style, but as long as you don't wear the big ones, the skinny ones, these are cashmere socks that we started doing at J Crew, they whatever, and now we do them at, this is clothes, this scarf, it's 40 years old. Michael Drake was a good friend I used to buy from him in London. His collection, there is a Michael Drake now, but it's not the same. I have about twenty versions of this. I bought him wholesale, because, you know, and this sweater. This is our third year at Alex Mill, but forever. And it's casually or not prices on cashmere are good. Oh, I only do vintage watches because I like vintage. And old is new today. The vintage business is this way. And it's unique. You're not like buying, you're not going to see, well, a hooded sweatshirt never goes out of sale. Now, that's a novelty.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Classic It's a good question. I always say if you know, you know. I wear clothes that have no expiration date. This shoe. I found it in Paris. It's Alden in American Company. And I must have been Probably 40 years ago was my favorite store. until they were bought out by a big American department so then it's over. So this shoe is from Alden. I've been wearing not this one shoe. We used to buy from Alden a J Crew and my good friend Todd Snyder, who's a men's designer, he buys from Alden, and I asked him about a year ago I said, can you ask them to do a special, this shoe again for me? I ordered ten of them. That's awesome. I wear this and I wear another one.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I never thought about it that way, so we got rid of men's, and then Somsack, who works with me and us, creative guy, was at Jew for 15 years. And he left for a year, hired him back, he became the creative director of Madewell. Boom, boom, boom. And Madewell was a great company until it wasn't. You know, when we had a two billion dollar, well, don't even get me started with selling companies because the mercenaries. And by the way, Gap, you know, when I left there, I'd say that no one called me on the board. eighteen years? Hello? Can you believe that?”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Since nineteen thirty seven he shows it to me was actually the logo. He said what do you think? I said it's fantastic. He said, well, do you want to buy it? I said if the... Yeah, what about you? We can't afford it. Whatever. I bought the name. I own the name and when we went public at Jew, Then we did made well. And I had a vision. I loved work clothes then, like Carhartt and all that. But I had a vision for it. But you can't do anything well unless you have the right team. So we struggled for the first three or four years. We're going to do men's and women's, and I decided, let's get rid of men's. Now, I didn't have anyone to talk to about this other than myself.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're not looking at you are not curious in any field, whether it's nonprofit, profit, selling cars and all that, any field product is always driving and product is about emotion, in my opinion. Someone said this the other day, and I kind of took it on myself to say it. I have a love affair with the companies that I've been involved with. Made well, you know what happened, how I got that name. So David Mullen, who's worked, he's a great wash guy. He's an old friend 10 or 15 years ago, I was a J crew. You know how old Navy and the whole concept, I told you. So David has a logo made well known.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I always named Carol because Carol Myrowitz, TJ Maxx, is the honest discounter. And she's a great merchant. The only thing is you have to keep changing acts the wrong word, but you got to keep changing and seeing down the road. And I have these ideas.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Stanley Mark is sitting Marcus was known for that. I don't think it's, you know, the hottest supermarket in America now. You're one? I was in one in LA about three or four weeks ago. I don't call anything theater. Theater is great product looking like a painting and going in, for me, I never had Old Navy, by the way It was an amazing business in its day. I had Schwinbikes. Around the escalator. We sold out of them very quickly, and then the guy I knew who owned, you know, he's an investor, not a close friend, but Schwinn decided not to sell us because we weren't buying them from dealer. But the business first apparel business to I think they hit a billion dollars. The first one in apparel, but now I'm sure there's many others. But I just follow the guidance of”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I said we're going to do that. We sell a million cashmere hats. We're famous for that. And by the way, being famous for something drives businesses because you're dominant.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I cut that out and I said this is something we will do while we are doing hooded sweatshirts in bright colors. And then I always do detective work. I'm addicted to detective shows. Great, great detectives solve cold cases. There's such a difference. Anyway, I then I asked someone who I know, I said, are there any companies we can do a collaboration with? We do collaborations. We get together. And we did it at Jake. We kind of invented it. Now everyone's, they're all collaborating with all the famous brands. So it doesn't make it unique. But anyway, so she mentioned this company in England. I went online, looked at it, and they had a hoodie hat, a bacal lava, whatever it's called.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From every available source. And when I hear something two or three times, I bring it to work immediately. Every weekend I have a Monday morning weekend update. What is it? It's a combination of me seeing things that are an idea. I look through Not that I like the fashion magazines, but I look through every picture on monthly, and if there's a picture I like. I cut it out. Last weekend it was a great picture. It was a designer, I think it was Fendi. And they just showed the woman's heads. And they had a sweatshirt on. Each of them bright colors.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you have to, you can follow the rules. On the other hand, you have to have a drive menu that's creative and can make changes. When I worked at a department stores, you know, I'll never forget I had some simple ideas for the financial person. You know, none of them, they didn't ask people. I ask people, you know, they know young people don't have any baggage.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hang tags on buttons. So I used to walk around bending down with the racks of coats like this. I took a rolling chair. I'm going down the aisle. It was like my father got so angry at me. He wasn't my, who knows who my boss was. But that's what happens in corporations. No one wants to change the rules in a way. Not that he was a corporate guy.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The world, this is funny. A friend sends me 20 plus page article two weeks ago talking about how average the world is today. I totally, I call him, I said, wow, you are on. He talked about cars. He talked about designs. He talked, this article, he didn't write it, but the world's average. And you have to be not average if you want to do what you do. For me, you break the rules. But the rules are, you know, common knowledge isn't that common as, you know, it isn't. And I'm an anti-authority guy. I don't like that. I don't like to, I'll never forget when I used to work in the shipping room, I had an idea. You know, I used to ticket, you know how you see those things.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. Look, I don't know. It's not what I do for a living. I say, if you see around corners, you have to have a vision.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's funny you use that word. The whole business is recognizing patterns. There's patterns that go on. And for me, I have to preempt the pattern. And then I push the team. Like right now, personalization. Two years ago, we had painted dogs on a tote bag. 18 of them that day gone two years ago. I have still in the last two years been I want personalization to be what we do with personalizes the goods. So we have, I don't have my bag here, but painted initials cool. The dogs, painted dogs, but I'm trying to get people to move. And it's hard. So, you kn”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In doing this, it's vision, imagination don't have any doctor knows, I call him doctor knows, telling you it's not going to work. If I look, Old Navy, I went out. And I did it”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While Ralph had the horse, and that was I remember I was a buyer of Bloomingdale's Ralph had the horse when he just started, and it was prestigious. The horse was prestigious”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most people? They don't get it. You know, the logo business, and by the way, I learned this last week. They called it dupes. Do you know that? All the designer copies are called dupes-like and duplicates. Right. Hot business today because people say, well, the LVs, who the hell knows if it's real or fake. You look at all”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I do, I try to explain this. I have a photograph in my mind. It's I go into a shop, it paints a picture or it doesn't. One bad color in a great painting, I'm not a big art collector. I love nice pictures, but that changes, throws off the whole painting. It's like the wheels, the ugly wheels on a Mustang. And I mean that every car now is ugly wheels I can't get over it. You know, you see the wheels. It's like having a bad button on a sweater like this. This is one of our bestsellers. And if you put an ugly button on this, that's what you notice. And I say never give a customer a reason not to buy something. It's one of my rules, you know.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, I designed the first store with him because he designed an ugly store and we went in and I told him, get a warehouse, build a store so we can design it. And guess we did a gap. You have a store before you open it up. So I went in. It's very simple. I said it was two chachkid. He said simple, a screen to show the movie or whatever it is. So we designed the store and that's the store. It's still the same store today.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so this is, we had a bad year. So Jobs was not at that board meeting, I presented at that board meeting the turnaround assortment. I looked at Banana Republic, Gap, and Old Navy. It was a tough year, I think, in the marketplace. They weren't looking at me. I get home about nine. He says Don just told me you're getting fired and they had to tell him. He said, they didn't tell me until now because they were worried I would tell you. And of course I would tell you. So but Nine was the deadline they had for whatever. And I called Don. He brushed me off very quickly. Come in at eight o'clock. He hands me a one note Whatever. That was my last day.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And, you know, if they came in, they didn't like the name old Navy. I got it off a bar in Paris. I was driving to the airport. I was fortunately in the back seat on the left. I'm looking out. I said to Maggie, she was in marketing. I go to Paris. You go to shop, you get ideas creative. So I see a marquee with a lot of neon lights, and it says old Navy. Said Maggie, that's the name. We needed a name for old Navy. which, by the way, is about $11 billion business today. That's the name. They didn't like the name. Long story short, two naming, I don't like agencies and I don't like consultants. And Old Navy, by the way, that was started. It's a whole other story.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was a troublemaker because he brought up things I'd sit there, thank God, but he alienated people because You know, it's okay to alienate people. But he really wasn't a very paid attention board member. But I didn't care. So he was on the board only about a year and he wasn't very popular, but I just, you know, guy was ill. He was dying. I just so admired him. And I really admired him a lot. And Johnny Ive was his lunch mate, and I had, you know, Johnny and I became good friends. And Steve was whatever. So there's a board meeting. I knew there was something going on. People all of a sudden, you know, when you have corporate and they don't, first of all, I never had a director who really understood The goods”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Steve Jobs joined the board. He was recruiting me to join his board about a year. Steve was very seductive. He doesn't give up. Like a lot of people who do what he does. And he called me one day and he said, I'll join the Gap Board if you join my board. Deal, because I knew Steve, there's no such thing as an independent director. You know, there's a litmus test, not a relative. They don't do business with you. But they ought to have on the test not a close friend, not a college roommate, not a cousin, not whatever, unless it's, you know, if it's a controlled company, you can do what you want, but independent directors. So I said, didn't even think, deal. I knew he would be Steve Jobs. He's irreverent. He challenges things. He might be late, but I love the guy.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, everyone knows an elastic waste. And I said Continue that, and you're not doing this whatever it was. That's what I do. And it's funny, and they call things, I like to name things that say what it is. And I go through this all the time. They confuse people. I said there's certain names that you know what it is.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. We did the PJME spajama thing, which is a really fun thing. It's going to be very good for him and us long term. There's They call a box short. Their name for it was a short pajama pen. And they show me their new version. Now, it's the third after the pant and the pajama set. They're calling it the short pajama pants. Number three Cellar and they show me this thing that they're changing it. Now this is typical of what goes on. And I said it's the third best seller. You want to change it? I said, and it's called a boxer short. It's not called. I get a little impatient a lot. And then I do a little survey. I go around just to, I say, what do you call this? It's a boxer short. When you say the word boxer short, You don't have to describe it. It is what everybody has.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To sign up for all these accounts. Simple, stupid, is the greatest lesson. My first week at the gap. Put up signs, keep it simple, I took out the stupid. Every desk in the corporation, people would talk a language to me. I didn't know the language I'll never forget this one woman she's in charge of whatever planning and something. I didn't know what she was talking about, and I just said, keep it simple to the point that. If you have to bring everything to its simplest common denominator”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go on the selling floor, speak to someone. Plus, it's decent. You know, people for me, I identify with those people who aren't the fancy people.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Flying to the store. There's no In corporations, most of the brass, they're in their ivory tower. I remember in the department stores.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I went out, Mall of America, I walked in the store. I was there no more than five minutes and I said to myself. Only the paranoid survivors.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it goes with it. And if you're not, a lot of people don't compete. I know friends who run companies. They're bureaucrats. I know because I know them. So Old Navy, you know how I started that? It's my favorite, one of my favorite stories. So in the New York Times, I used to read it when it was a decent paper, business section. I always like to read about business because I wanted to be who they all were. And then I realized, well, I didn't realize for a long time who they were, but not what I wanted to be. So there was a little article buried on page four or five about Target. Now it was then called Dayton Hudson, very bureaucratic. Company that I knew that they did a lot of research and a lot of this and a lot of that. And then someone was quoted as saying it's pretty much going to be a cheaper version of GAP.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, every day. The key learnings, you must have a vision. You must be whatever's defined as a good merchant. You must be spot on and be a pain in the ass because the best bosses. And I always say, hire your boss, because that's the one. And I never had bosses who I thought were the best, especially in, yeah, but I became the boss other than Don was my boss there. And I had to, you know, play that game with him. Because if you do what I do, and I always use Steve does, and you do what maybe all these other people do, you are always competing. You have to be competing.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, well, the bureaucracy is I'm all over everything. I took every call from a customer and they'd be surprised about, you know, and I say if I couldn't do it, you have to do it. Know, but today, you know, it doesn't always work”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's well, yeah, and then I don't have to worry about meeting the competition, what's going on in the business today, by the way, is if you look at pricing, first of all, everything's on sale. I always give advice when I'm on whatever. I say, before you give them the credit card, Google the item you want to buy. You'll find it somewhere most of the time.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe twenty five years old, then I said Jesus. Something's wrong here, and you know I'm self taught, and then I'm also very curious. When I join Anne Taylor, Brooks brothers, and I saw it decline dramatically then because... No merchants running it, the quality they would take quality out to maintain price. But they had a protective device about competitors. They owned their name. They didn't sell wholesale. No one could take a markdown. So what I did at Anne Taylor is I found some manufacturers. Today you get your own, but who can make goods, we design them with them. And we had Ann Taylor's studio label. No one told me to do that, but do do.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In a way. What I do say this is my plan, I look for white space. This is in hindsight. So Anne Taylor was hugely successful. I left after four years because my bosses were bureaucrats and I didn't like it there. And I also was at the stage in my life where I have to have something I wanted to do where I could feel not compensated the right. I was very happy with what I earned. But I face the realities of living in Manhattan. Anyway, I always had Anne Taylor was purely instinctive, but I did learn there that I didn't want to sell. Brand A, B, C, D, and today you can get every brand at a discount in TJ Maxx, my friend there, Caroline. She's the best. You can go to TJ Maxx and trust. But they're the biggest customers of most brands. So I didn't want to carry, because Alexander's taught me the lesson”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The picture painted because when I just always, it's a really interesting question because I don't know how to explain what I look at, but I look at colors very important. When I did GAP, I had a list of styles. I was trying to start something. I was looking for my vision. I always admired Ralph Lauren, but I always thought I couldn't afford his clothes. He was a Bronx guy ahead of me. And, you know, he always had a point of view. And I admired him. I used to buy his clothes wholesale. Why? Because a friend of mine's cousin was his secretary. So I got it half off, whatever. But I always liked his taste. And it's still the same today. And there's not a lot of people who do that.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I can always tell when something's not on brand. I remember in some of my jobs, I remember looking at something. It was a big tell. And I said, uh-oh. And I didn't follow my instinct. And it really hurt one of the companies, you know, there's people involved. But it means to be a good merchant is you can't define it, but you know when you know.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, for me, I use that word a lot, but it's in the eyes of the beholder. I have a friend, he's very successful. I was talking about the ugly merchandise in one of the companies he's involved with. He said well to the customer it's not ugly. To me it's ugly. Now, I know what I know, and I don't know where my eye came from, but it came from somewhere, but taste and style and fair value and moving forward and having a vision, those are the key ingredients that I think. Now when people say, well, look how good that company is doing, I said that's not what I like to do. I like to be proud of the merchandise. I like it to be fit my standards. I don't say it that way, of what it is.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What it means to me. Is and there's not a lot, I think. It means to have know from what's going to sell well, from what's not going to maybe sell well. Focus, make sure it's on brand. Now this is what I do. No rear view mirror. Most people do rearview mirror and they say, well, we sold last year this. Sometimes it's going to go this way a lot. So you chase what's over in post peak. It means to me to be a merchant is having a sense of what's going to sell, knowing that like I always had an instinct, I guess, on what I loved. And I learned later on if I think it is non-negotiable.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can't teach anyone. I am a huge proponent of. And I never could say, like, Jesus, they're the president, they're the CEO, they're the this. And I'm thinking, I'm not impressed privately. And I can name drop some of the big shots of the time in the retail business. And I would say something like what. Not a merchant may look at me that I could tell. And because I was a merchant, I guess. My first second day at Bloomingdale's, they put me in charge of a department because the buyer, Barber, was on maternity leave. Stan Stern, who I loved dearly, was a great boss. I was on my own. And I just did it.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those two or three years Even when it turned around was like uh oh, but I worked my ass off, I kept no one taught me how to run Aunt Taylor, I just did it without any supervision because the headquarters twenty five million dollars business, but I just went in there day one and corporate a lot of people, they leave you alone. Or they don't leave you alone. But there I was in the threat was if I don't turn this, I was under pressure. I didn't make money there. They didn't pay me. I didn't negotiate, whatever, but it is what it is. So I always depended upon my gut, my instinct, and in hindsight I did. I knew who was good person, not a good person. I knew who was full of it and down to earth. And in the department store, it was 12 years. I kept looking for the right place to go.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my God, if you take over something you gotta get rid of the old merchandise because it ties up a lot of cash. And Don bless his heart, was nervous about the earnings. I get emotional. You know, my stomach speaks for me a lot. But, you know, business got tough for the first year. The stock drop probably 50%. You know, I never I worked hard and I was scared after a year I'll never forget we were talking about a year and a half we were in Carmel and was sitting there we come up with kind of a bankruptcy plan. That's when I started to get nervous and I've been there a year and a half. Don redid the 400 plus stores. I redid all the merchandise. I threw it all. And that's where he was concerned. But you got to take and you got to get the cash out of bad good, just like rotten fish. So we redid the stores.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I can't answer for others. I think, you know, why? I think you have to be creative to move any business forward, any institution. And that's what I think, and it's really based on my own personal experience. And also in the sector I'm in fashion and all that, creative drives the engines. So why it's a good question? Well, salary, they don't want to risk that. They don't want to risk, I mean, they get very wealthy these days becoming a CEO.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was five years old going to a nursery school. I didn't have any connections. I thought it was a fancy one. It wasn't a good choice. But I think if you look at people, you know, like everyone, all these earnings reports, I know the public relations people write that. They script them. And safe, you have a good education. You don't want to take a risk on picking the wrong boss or senior executives. And I think there's a lot of self-interested people in this world. Plenty of them.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's my own thing, I think, in corporations and, well, look at all the COs out there. I don't know all of them, but I think safe, they went to the right schools. I couldn't care less where anyone goes to school. I like to see a college degree, but I also like to see a work history. But if you're a safe choice, and it's, again, it's an editorial on what I think people would argue if they went to a fancy school here and a fancy school there. And now it starts, and I was”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Over time, you know, because the boss reviews you, the boss promotes you. I've learned over the last number of years the best judge of a boss is the person who works for the boss.”
2025-02-04 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Mickey Drexler: The Art of Selling with Retail's Merchant Prince · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT