Gap Started Off By Cowboys And Invested Heavily In Sportswear.

Why did Gap start off with jeans? In 1969, founder Donald Fisher went to San Francisco Ocean Avenue to sell Levi's jeans because she could not buy a pair of jeans. The first Gap store provides young people with more styles and sizes than other stores. Gap With centralized procurement and adequate stocking, the strategy is developing at a low price. However, since 1976, Gap has gradually lost its low price advantage. Early reliance mainly on selling Levi 's Jeans Gap began to seek change and launched its own brand.

Up to now, Gap is one of the largest jeans producers in the world. But in the past 11 months, sales of Gap brands have been declining.

Gap's 2014 annual report shows that Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic have been quite mature. The revenue of 3 brands last year's outlets and Outlets stores was 6 billion 165 million US dollars, 6 billion 619 million US dollars and 2 billion 922 million US dollars respectively, but Gap sales decreased by 3%. The income of Athleta is not listed separately. The annual revenue of Athleta and Intermix and Piperlime is about 729 million dollars. The sales of these three brands are the largest, reaching 8%.

Over the past two years, more and more people, especially women, have shown a preference for sportswear, and the market for sportswear has increased rapidly. Barclays analysts say that by 2020, sportswear sales in the US will increase by 50% over 100 billion dollars.

Recently, the US investment bank Piper Jaffray also released a report on youth consumption habits. According to the report, teenagers' choice of clothes has changed. They would rather choose Nike and Lululemo sportswear instead of Abercrombie's classic cowboy.

Gap and other retailers are targeting this business opportunity.

Nike, Lululemon, Under Armour and Adidas are the most popular among teenagers. Sports brand 。 According to the report, Lululemon's Legging, especially Yoga wear, is now the most popular choice for girls, but jeans are ranked tenth. For the first time in history, teenagers like fitness brand more than Cowboy brand.

For male consumers, they are also more and more fond of sportswear. In particular, Lululemon's "Anti-ball crushing" products for men are loved by male consumers. This product looks like normal pants and sportswear comfort.

"Our generation has grown up in jeans. Cowboy clothing is a part of our life. It is still." "But this generation has grown up in sportswear and yoga wear, and this trend is increasing," said Nancy Green, head of Athleta.

At present, Athleta has more than 100 stores. At the early meeting of January this year, Gap's CEO Art Peck announced that the company was optimistic about Athleta, and Athleta will open another 20 stores this year. At the same time, the two brands of Gap and Old Navy are also selling more and more Legging and jogging long pants.

Lululemon and Gap are a pair of enemies. Because they saw the market for sportswear, they both wanted to buy Athleta. But in the end, Gap successfully managed to keep Athleta in its pocket. In just 7 years, Athleta has been regarded as the most powerful competitor of Lululemon.

Athleta will succeed, and it will appreciate the lifestyle of this generation of young people in sports and leisure. But this is also risky. Since Mickey Drexler has led Old Navy, Gap has never succeeded in creating a new main line brand, and Mickey Drexler has gone to J.Crew..