Why Gap's reinvention might just work

Summed up: Art Peck, Gap's new CEO, really gets it.

First, a little background on myself and my relationship to Gap. I founded Threadless.com, an online community of independent artists from all around the world who create designs for products like t-shirts. Since we started in 2000, we've sold millions of t-shirts over the years and paid artists millions of dollars for their work.

When I started Threadless at age 20, it was largely born out of a teenage angst I had in high school against big labels. It bothered me that everyone wore clothes from the mall with corporate labels across the chest, like Gap. In my mind, they were paying a huge corporation for the privilege of wearing an advertisement on their chests. I mostly wore t-shirts by bands I listened to, at least then I felt like I was supporting something real. Later on, by starting Threadless, I created the anti-label. None of our products have our logo on them, only artwork created by our artist community.

As Threadless grew, we began thinking about how we could take our product into offline retail. We were very wary of this as I didn't feel like most major retailers would prioritize crediting the artist. I wanted to make sure the customer knew that someone made the design, and who that someone was.

Art Peck, then President of Gap North America, flew into Chicago with his team to meet our team. We spent the day talking about how we could work together. At the end of the meetings, Art gathered together our entire staff along with his team and spoke to all of us in our atrium. He expressed to all of us that the deal will never work if we don't tell the story of the artist. He understood the value of our brand and knew that Gap had a duty to do right by the artist.

Over the next 2 years, and 14 product collection roll-outs, Gap blew me away with their dedication to telling the artist's story in their stores. Each design had a plaque with the artist's name, bio, location, and even their personal URL. Threadless had its own section in the store telling the story of our artist communities, and where the designs came from. The most amazing thing was hearing the stories from the artists themselves when they walked in the stores and saw their work and story being told.

I learned a lot of things during our partnership. I learned that a brand is much more than a logo, it's often something representative of an aspiration that people want their own identities associated with. People connect with brands because they mirror a piece of themselves. I also learned that many corporations, no matter how big, have real people that care behind them. About Art, I learned that even in such a large corporation, real change and amazing things can be made with the right leadership and vision.

In 2012, the ownership of Gap design moved from the SF office to NYC and Art moved to the Growth, Innovation, and Digital division. Unfortunately our deal ended along with those organizational changes. Over the following couple of years, Gap sales have continued to suffer.

I was very pleased to learn that Art would become Gap's CEO effective February, 2015. He knows that it's all about a great product. He's a creative who understands that fashion is about art and culture. For a fashion brand to be great, you have to gain the trust of the creative class, the people that affect and change art and culture. We're already seeing this effort come into fruition with things like #GapREMIXproject.

Frankly, all the rest of it — global growth, digital, everything else that we’re doing — doesn’t matter if we aren’t better and more consistent at the product we put in our stores
– Art Peck

Some may criticize some of the recent changes Art has made at Gap, like closing 175 stores or shaking up the executive team. However, I think these are the difficult decisions that Gap needs to be making right now to set a foundation for rebuilding growth and I'm glad to see Art digging in on turning the company around. If anyone can do it, it's him.