Why YZY could beat Gap.
a corporate dance.
I walked down Broadway in SoHo. According to Apple Maps (my preferred directory choice), there should have been Gap stores between Broome and Spring. It wasn't, and there isn't a Gap store below 14th street anymore.
The YZY Gap/Balenciaga (YGEBB) first drop had arrived, and I wanted to see the store set-up for it, who was there, and what they were buying.
I could have saved the trip. Twitter showed me everything I needed to see without going to midtown.
According to Gap, 75% of the YZY customers are young and new to Gap, a group they've been trying to get the attention for decades. But, this is quite a vanity play even Gap knows that customer doesn't belong to them and never will. Following these numbers given in August 2021 by since departed CEO Sonia Syngal, Gap executives have fumbled with words on how happy they have been with the YZY creative process and product pipeline. You can sense the fear in them, but they have nothing else. This is the last move for Gap.
If not for YZY, what would become of the company too heavy to move out of its own way? Regardless of this false confidence, the company seems hesitant to bake YZY's financials into its revenue expectations, focusing on Old Navy as the breadwinner for the portfolio, which is interesting considering the origin history. Someone brilliant once said, the greatest enemy is the competitors you create. When former President Mickey Drexler started Old Navy, he did so to protect against competitors undercutting GAP, and Old Navy was the solution, a low-priced alternative. Over time, the brand has become a competitor to Gap itself, and you'd be hard-pressed to tell each apart without the label. This information is essential to remember as I make a case for my theory.
YZY is said to be 'taking Gap leaps and bounds beyond competitors in sheer cultural relevance,' but how do you quantify this, and who would you say is a competitor to Gap at this stage besides those in it’s own portfolio? Uniqlo has clear differentiation in the market, J Crew has created such a well-thought-out playbook that analysts can't help but compare and dissect the two approaches, Zara has created a category to it’s own, H&M, Shein cater to runway copies.
From an external point of view, Gap has done the bare minimum to support the partnership and make sense of it. They are relying on hype as the primary vehicle rather than solidifying its approach, leaving them wide open for the negative sentiment from anyone who isn't a Yeezy fan. The mainline Gap brand, product, and stores are just as stagnant as ever. This partnership is just highlighting Gaps' internal weaknesses and disconnect.
The sad Gap story isn't new. Almost two decades (19 years to be exact) of decline with few false signs of hope and too many attempts to connect to every generation, it missed the mark to engage with millennials and the chance to redefine e-commerce. The brand doesn't have a place in this world and hasn't stood for something since Mickey Drexler left in 2002.
Too many teams and external creative agencies have been on a steady revolving door since the early 2000s, each attempting to reignite the brand position through nostalgic creative direction and 'cultural,' diverse projects, trying to remind anyone that it used to be cool.
Nostalgia and irony haven't been enough to revive it. The Y2K, 90s carousel of interest is fleeting, and the target they are after knows it is cooler to buy vintage GAP through Depop than buy new Gap. Because, no matter what they create or use as a throwback, it doesn't connect to what you see when you walk into a store (if you can find one), go online, and if all of this does convert to a sale, at the end of it all, the product isn't good anymore.
Gap's biggest mistake was thinking any collaboration would magically propel them forward without them doing the work and fixing their problems. Regardless if it was the short-fated Telfar or a 10-year YZY plan. Perhaps it was a tactic to dodge internal red tape, something an outsider with a cult following could do, with more flexibility to move quickly, evading the archaic ideas and practices from Gap execs - sounds about right.
A product of reaching peak collaboration, and it's ad nauseam. Collaborations mostly say that brands aren't willing to do the work themselves. It's a half-step. At that point, not collaborating with anyone else is more revolutionary for a brand.
I don't want to generalize too much. Yes, some innovative collaborations exist but belong entirely to those brands with proven strong foundations, without the need to borrow equity from another. In doing so, they add something they can't do themselves internally.
A quote floating around by Gap is 'that they hope to see what Ye did for Adidas.' We are aware that Adidas was already in a strong position before Yeezy, the partnership has been incredibly lucrative since 2013, Adidas didn't need a savior, adding Kanye to an extensive list of designers already on their roster. It does feel redundant even to say this. Still, Gap publicly stating that they hope for the same response as Yeezy/Adidas confirms how out-of-touch the Gap Inc board is, a problem with many of these legacy brands with prehistoric ideals—relying on collaborators to fix an entire corporation's multi-year problem. Mind you, Gap isn’t alone in this thinking.
Most analysts, articles, industry experts, et al. speak mostly about if Yeezy can save Gap, but we are missing the point. This problem shines a more substantial light on an ongoing situation we keep seeing in fashion, quick fixes that don't work. Just like drop model collaborations, the hype isn't enough to save or sell brands anymore, and this partnership might be the one that proves this.
The brand sentiment for either Gap or Yeezy isn't high, with YZY dragged as the brand that can't save Gap. What's left of the Gap customer doesn't care about YZY, and the YZY customer doesn't care about Gap. A classic show of a large corporation's failure to understand how to support this kind of attention and a lesson to the rest.
In August 2021, Mickey Drexler admitted to trying to convince Ye not to take the deal, that it didn't work for someone like him, who isn't a corporate person. It didn't make sense.
Working for any large corporation, the politics involved to get an idea across the line takes so much finesse, regardless of how good you are creatively. It's a psychological dance mastered by few. Hence the reason for the YZY Gap innovation team in LA, headed by Jimmy Iovine, approved head of YZY Gap, Leonardo Lawson - the conduit between Ye and Gap. While helping deliver on product, I wonder how respected this relationship is.
With Gap, he's tied to stock warrants and sales targets. He still is guided by his creative process (why we only saw two products in the first year), but didn't have the option to pull out and run. Confined to accept the infrastructure he needed to birth a complete collection into the world, with the overarching support from Denma, Balenciaga and the YZY Gap team.
Regardless, this corporate deal is what Ye needed all along, confinement, a reason to commit, and the locked-in pressure to produce, learn from his mistakes, and move effectively. Ye is well-known to be the one with revolutionary ideas that don't often come to fruition. Many factors contribute to this, resistance, the pursuit of perfection, or him not having the right people around him.
Ultimately, he could have done this himself, worked with Demna and the Balenciaga team, sampled the collection, brought together a new team unit, and launched YZYSPLY with complete ownership, considering he has the investment, it sounds like a smart move - so why didn't he?
It seems obvious that it's the knowledge, the supply chain, manufacturing, and company infrastructure to support his more extensive plan of pushing to take over Gap entirely or, perhaps providing he can become what the brand won't do for itself.
There is work to be done. The pieces are still much higher than Gap and Ye would have liked, but the idea of the accessible product is being chipped away and not something Ye could not have achieved in the state he has been operating up until now. His dream of taking production back to America is still not realized, but he needed to see how he was working was not sustainable for the mission.
In June 2020, with the WestDayEver announcement, there was much speculation on what a YZY Gap store would be. Ambitious, sparse, minimal, and considering Ye's relationship to architecture and design, it would no doubt be considered. Maybe he could tap into his favorite architects, Oana Stanescu, Axel, and Silvestrin, to bring to life the whole YZY Gap world because that's what would ultimately sell the experience over the product.
In reality, the collection roll-out has been a significant let-down and undermined the point of the partnership. The way Ye designs is utilitarian, and regardless of your stance on his designs, you can't deny his influence. The collaboration's significance was connecting the original idea of Gap - good essential clothing.
The output has been riddled with criticism because it's not revolutionary or groundbreaking - and it never was supposed to be. It was just supposed to fill the gap in more ways than one. The product was beyond fashion and hyper-utility. Ye designs for himself when he was a kid, wanting good clothes. The price points don't reflect this ambition yet for those who don't have the option to buy luxury.
YGEBB is on a stand-alone site, just like YEEZY Adidas. Odd to see that the collection is also available on Balenciaga.com, Mytheresa, LuisaViaRoma, Mr. Porter, and Farfetch. While Ye has wanted accessibility, these platforms does feel disconnected, diluting the approach he has tried to achieve. It doesn't feel like Ye and could be a play from Kering or a response to Gap's inability to think beyond. I’m yet to find information on this.
Most of the collection is still available on all sites (70%), and I wouldn't be surprised to see it discounted the following season.
As of last week, YGEBB is available in 1 flagship and 45 nondescript GAP stores (the ones still open). None of the speculated YZY fit-outs were in the full roll-out, save for the dedicated space in the Times Square Gap store, which feels more like a reactive convenience of available space. A missed opportunity to create enviroments in the areas of major cities where the kids who would buy this are.
He has gained more press surrounding the merchandise vitriol for having a POV without any supporting communication from Gap in-store. If not for the construction bags, did Gap expect to hang the collaboration next to their standard mainline product, with hopes a YZY fan would want that also? Most probably. You could dissect this as a symbolic approach from Ye, and I do think we're giving him too much credit. It feels like a reactive solution to not wanting the clothes on hangers alongside the main label Gap. A quick fix disguised as a democratic move.
It's interesting to see where the focus lies. Criticism of the collection display outweighs the actual designs. The partnership is shown out of context and has made it more about the product than the ambition.
Unsurprisingly, Ye has made moves to fix this. You'd hope that he realizes you can't start with the product and then figure out how to sell it. The product is secondary for every brand, any category, and we know this.
Why would he do this now to wait until June to file trademarks for YZYSPLY? I can't help but think he's gearing up to take lessons he's learning from Gap to build his empire out correctly. According to documents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office obtained, West's Mascotte Holdings filed to trademark "YZYSPLY" on June 29 for "retail stores [and] retail store services."
It would be hard to argue that this isn't a direct response to the resistance from Gap and the mismatched vision to support the YZY collaboration universally. He has the potential to own 2.99 percent of Gap through the stock warrants in his deal. With that on the table, he is not going anywhere and will continue to fight to take over, or at the very least make these stocks worth something to support his risk.
My final theory is here.
Gap has yet to convince us to take them seriously, and they have proven they aren't changing themselves outside of YZY Gap.
It is also clear that Gap doesn't have a place in this climate anymore, and Ye essentially could have done this himself.
Dedicated store roll-outs would be the smart next step, and Gap knows they aren't catering to an in-store customer any more, closing approx 350 Gap and Banana Republic stores across North America by the end of 2023.
YZY Gap is different and needs an environment to exist outside of e-comm. With the YZYSPLY trademark, Ye could potentially be taking this into his own hands, creating environments to support his vision.
Gap has two options: lose out entirely on potential fresh foot traffic to their brand or endorse this.
Does Gap become an online entity, an e-comm-only platform, putting its weight behind YZYSPLY spaces? Otherwise, it could be said that they ultimately have funded their next competitor to rise.
Are we looking at YZY saving Gap, or is YZY beating Gap? A trojan horse in the making.
where is the Jimmy Iovine piece from? haven't heard that.