In Conversation with Amy Kelly Lauer

Can you share the journey of how you started in your career and the key milestones that defined your career path?

I was in college and a psych major. It was time to work with the career center and choose who you wanted to interview with. When I learned department stores were coming on campus, I was elated, because one of my favorite activities has always been shopping, and when I found out I could graduate from college and spend my entire day in a store, I thought that sounded like the exact place I wanted to be! I went through department store training in Brooklyn, New York, with Abraham & Straus.

My milestones have been defined by always getting a little “itchy” and wanting to learn something new. I started on the store side, where I was trained to be a department store manager. I became very curious about buying and wasn’t able to transition into buying at Abraham & Straus, so I went to Kids "Я" Us. I joined them as an Associate Buyer when they were just entering their high growth period. I did take a detour to go back to business school because I wanted to understand more about business. After that, I joined May Department Stores in their rotational training program for MBAs and was placed as the Liz Claiborne buyer at Lord & Taylor. When I got “itchy” again, I said yes to interviews with teams at Gap and Ann Taylor. I felt right at home with the casual and super nice senior executives of Gap. I loved that they all wore jeans to the office! When they offered me a role as a Senior Merchant with Old Navy, I jumped at the chance to move to San Francisco and join this “unknown” brand. It was 1994, the year Old Navy was founded, and the first of many career choices I made over the course of my 22-year career with Gap Inc.

My career choices and milestones were driven by my desire to learn new things, how I like to work, and what I value. I thrive in high-growth, a little chaotic, slightly unstructured, wear many hats, under-the-radar environments. From Old Navy, I was Director of Women’s Merchandising for Gap International in their high growth period, worked in brand strategy for Gap, shifted back to merchandising as Divisional Merchandise Manager (DMM) for Kids, Baby, and Maternity for Gap Outlet, followed by DMM of BananaRepublic.com, General Manager (GM) for BananaRepublic.com, and GM for OldNavy.com. Some of these moves were lateral; some were of increased scope, scale, and impact. All included learning, growing, leading, and managing.?

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What is a specific project or initiative that you’re particularly proud of in your career?

One that comes to mind is a proud moment because of the way we aligned around the possibilities of exponential growth and worked as a high-performing cross-functional team. I was the DMM for kids, maternity, and baby at Gap Outlet during a high growth period. We determined that we needed more space in the store to hit the trajectory of our growth rate. There was only so much productivity we could get within the existing space, and women’s and men’s didn’t have any space to give as the whole channel was experiencing so much growth. I led a large cross-functional team to create a vision to achieve our growth and impact trend. We determined that opening free-standing kids & baby stores was the only way to grow the business.

I’m proud of the work because there was a lot of innovation and collaboration with different functions to bring our vision to life, and then a lot of learnings.? We responded quickly after we opened, as we did not hit the hurdle rates we wanted. Sometimes you can’t have everything you want—there are tradeoffs, usually between time, money, and other resources. Our choice was to open these pilot stores without the adjacency we wanted or don’t open at all. We chose to open test stores so that we could learn. They were not successful because we couldn’t get people to move back and forth between two different Gap Outlet locations. We anticipated adjacent would be a success factor but did not know how key it was until we tried. Looking back, we could have tested a new larger full-category expression, requiring the existing store to shut down and re-open in a new location within the center with expanded space. Back in 2003, we did not test this possibility. Zooming out, my key takeaway is: exhaust brainstorming possibilities so you have a wide range of ideas, rather than a binary, on-off choice. You are likely to learn more and potentially get more right!

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What has been the biggest challenge in your career so far, and how did you overcome it?

There have been many, but I would say the biggest challenge was when I was leading oldnavy.com. The business was booming, and it was before omnichannel integration systems were really in place. There was a lot of fear because store traffic was declining, and of course, you need both stores and ecommerce to be productive, profitable, and hit their targets. However, during this time, the push/pull was framed as a zero-sum game—as if there was a limited amount of demand, and dotcom was “pulling it away from stores.”

The proud moment was when I realized that I had to figure out how everyone wins. I spoke at a store manager’s conference, and for Old Navy, this initially felt like an intimidating experience. We were in Florida, and I had to win over thousands of store executives. I worked and reworked my speech many times. In the end, I asked the audience to think about when they shop for themselves and their families. I made it real and relatable, taking them on the journey about how we shop today, the benefit of having a robust online experience, and how this can bring new customers into the brand. Most shoppers’ preference is to go into the store, try things on, and see and feel things. Sometimes they cannot get to a store, so ecommerce is a beautiful way to add value. Then, I made it even more real by presenting data, including customer lifetime value statistics, which demonstrated the value of ecommerce as being tied not only to customers’ first purchase but for store-centric customers, tied to incremental purchases. Our best customers shopped us via all channels: stores and ecommerce.

I felt like I did a compelling job telling the story of a win-win-win-win. The brand, stores, ecommerce, and customers all win. Multichannel/omnichannel is not at all a zero-sum game.

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What do you wish you had known from the start of your career?

I wish I knew that there were no “shoulds.” What I know now is that there are many choices you make. If you make a choice and it doesn't turn out to be what you thought it would be, you can choose again based on what you have learned.

What is the best career advice you’ve ever received?

I’ve gotten some very solid career advice from people. I would say the best advice, and I don’t know if you’re going to want to print this, was, “You’ll figure it out.”

I had taken a detour, and I was a few months into my new role as “business liaison” on the centralized fragrance team at Gap Inc. Two months into my maternity leave, I received a call from a former boss who had been promoted to President of Gap Brand and was putting together her leadership team. She asked me to come to the office and talk with her about a new role she wanted to create for me: Gap Strategy/Chief of Staff. My reaction was, “I don’t know how to do that.” Her advice was, “You’ll figure it out.” This stands out to me because not only was she advising me about my next role, but she also provided the belief in me that I didn’t have in myself.

I shared that story for a couple of reasons. First, I think it’s really important that you identify people who can be mentors for you. Meaning, they can teach you something that they’re really good at that you want to learn. Second, it’s important to identify a couple of sponsors. Those are people who are typically a few levels above you, who will vouch for you, and make sure that your name is in the room at important times.

The advice I got was to move into a new role where I had to define my responsibilities. My former boss, who became my boss again, was confident in me. She observed me “reinvent myself,” learn how to be successful in a range of roles, and she thought I could do it again. I just didn’t know I could do it. I was holding myself back, but she believed in me, so I tried, and it worked out. I learned a tremendous amount from working for her. My big takeaway: you can do just about anything if you set your mind to it.

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What is your advice to women and allies in our community?

I was just on a networking community building call this morning, and one thing that occurred to me is that it's very important to take the time to connect with other people and share stories. It’s even more important to be intentional with your choice of who you connect with and also what you'd like to ask them for and what you're comfortable giving them. I would just like to pass on to the community that people are more willing to help than you may think, and so your job is to be intentional and get what you want out of these connections.