Essay number 1 for Comm 210 PDF

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First essay in Comm 210 ...

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Gap was a famous brand and was the leader of clothing companies. The CEO, Art Peck, was the figure of the brand, and represented the brand all around the world. However, since the 1990's and the growing industry, Gap began decreasing their sales and revenue because of the interest loss of the customers. The company needed to renew to face new companies as Forever 21 or Zara. The problem is that they figured too late that they had to change their company’s image. The products it was selling wasn’t what the customer wanted, and even with discounts, the company’s sales were hardly decreasing. As said Wilditz, innovation is important to keep customers attracted to the brand. The sigmoid curve says that during the growth of a product, the company has to think about the next one to keep the improvement. However, seeing that their products were selling well, Peck stayed on it and didn’t think that one day the sales won’t be enough to keep the profit high. Gap had to find a way to make new products and sell them at the best price, and this is what they tried with the creation of new brands as « Banana Republic » and also the khaki-pants trend, but it wasn’t enough and too late. The company should’ve done this change during its expansion. Because of that, the CEO was fired and kept as a consultant, he didn’t see that it was the moment to create a new collection or a new type of clothes. The Gap’s shares « fell so much 12% » so the gap was already created, and the company knew it would be hard to catch up. The problem was about the core value of the products as said Tesley, and so a change was needed to take back the customers. Gap tried to renew in the 1990’s with some new products, but it was already too late and the resources weren’t big enough to renew the brand’s image. In 2010, it changed its logo to show that the company was a new one and closed some shops in the USA to expand itself abroad. The USA market wasn’t big enough to keep up. The sales weren’t increasing enough and so the company had to sell its most productive brand, Old navy. It had then to deal with what it had left, and focused on the summer season because winter was already done. Gap should have thought about the future before the interest for the company fell. According to Handy, the company should have tried to diversify in the 1990’s before the competition increased. The process is long and difficult, but companies have to think about what it will do after the maturity of its products even before it begins to grow. The succession of different products' growth is the solution for keeping the customer interest. For example, in November, the company should be working on summer’s collection, even before the winter’s one is out. All operations and products have to be prepared and ready before the passed one is out. Peck understood too late that the growth was not infinite and that he had to find other products and trends to follow to keep the growth and increase the shares’ values. The competitors had understood it and were always in advance, and so Gap could not follow because it was not ready for it, it had fallen behind. Also, the way Gap was still competitive in the 1980’s was because of the high discounts proposed, but it was not sustainable on the long term and so rather than innovating, it was losing money.

Giuliano Latella ID: 40118566 Overall, it’s pretty good. More paragraphs would make for an easier flow of ideas though and maybe a little less focus on the context at the start. Examples are good. I like where the last couple of sentences are going just would need a little more development. Maybe a little more analysis after evidence is needed at times....