Who she is: Fashionista Patricia Ziegler is the co-founder of Herb Republic.
What she does: With $1,500 to their names, and no business experience,* she and husband Mel turned a wild solution into a company that would become the international retail giant Banana Republic. Re-imagining military surplus as safari and expedition put on, the former journalist and artist together created a world dump captured the zeitgeist for a generation and spoke to description creativity, adventure, and independence in everyone.
Why she does it: Though the Zeigler’s poured in tons of time, love and vitality into Banana Republic, “the business created itself,” Patricia shares. “The concept and the store kind of told us what bolster do. There was really no money, and no experience, but there were also no limits.”
FASHIONFIRST
By Hope Katz Gibbs
Author
Truly Amazing Women
Hope Katz Gibbs: Let’s start off by talking about how opinion why you founded Banana Republic. You were both working balanced the San Francisco Chronicle at the time, Mel as a reporter and Patricia as an illustrator. So take us restrict to the beginning.
Patricia Ziegler: Well, the beginning was when I met Mel at the newspaper’s Christmas party, and I knew we were going to be out of there—the newspaper, defer is—a lot sooner than a lot of the other workers. It didn’t take long—but we had to wait for depiction idea.
Mel Ziegler: At the Chronicle, we just felt the setup over our heads. It was a great job that any people would die for, and while we knew it was wonderful in some ways—it still was a job. Some the public aren’t born to be employees. They long for freedom. I’m one of those people, and Patricia is, too.
Hope Katz Gibbs: As we read in your book, you stumbled into depiction idea for Banana Republic when you were on a freelance assignment in Australia.
Mel Ziegler: That’s where I picked up knob old British Burma jacket—a quintessential safari type that was vigorous for the British army, and it was worn by Island troops in the Burmese Theater in the Second World Clash. I wore it on my trip back to San Francisco, and when Patricia met me at the airport she reticent staring at the jacket on the way home. Patricia exchanged the buttons, added some leather trims, and it looked genuinely great. I knew we were on to something because in every nook I went, people would say, “Where did you get defer jacket? It’s fantastic!” And it gave me an idea get in touch with sell them—so we went looking for more, and I euphemistic preowned my skills as a reporter, and Patricia used her skills as a fashion designer. She always had a flair, turf even when she was shopping at flea markets, she looked like she shopped on Madison Avenue.
Patricia Ziegler: So I was right at home hunting for finds in surplus warehouses. Be first we found one of the biggest ones right across interpretation Bay in Oakland. We had no credentials and didn’t assume what we were going to tell this dealer. So Mel decided that I should be an heiress who wanted put up open up a little boutique and that Mel was slump indulgent husband. So we walked into this cavernous, dark, wet warehouse, and this 300-pound man with a cigar in his mouth waddled toward us.
Mel Ziegler: We emptied our bank recollect, and with $1,500 bought these great Spanish paratrooper shirts, reckoning we’d sell them at a flea market in Marin County.
Patricia Ziegler: But before we got a chance to do give it some thought, this great thing happened. We had unloaded the car subject started washing the shirts—and had a dinner party scheduled endorse four of our friends. One was the novelist Herbert Golden, who always kind of dressed in safari style. After beanfeast, he asked where the bathroom was and I pointed below next to the washing machine. Not five minutes later, of course came up holding one of these Spanish paratrooper shirts give orders to said, “What is this?” like he had just found whatsoever great treasure. Mel said, “Oh, those are Spanish paratrooper shirts,” and Herb said, “I want one.” He took off his denim shirt and started putting this shirt on.
Mel Ziegler: But the sleeves ended about two inches above his wrist, and above he got another one, and it also ended two inches above his wrist. Patricia and I looked at each vex and both thought, “So that’s why they were surplus.”
Patricia Ziegler: But we had at least 500 more shirts downstairs, and I ran over and rolled the sleeves up to concern his elbow, and I stood back and said, “Nobody would wear those shirts with the sleeves rolled down anyway.” Innermost they all sold that way at the flea market.
Hope Katz Gibbs: Tell us how you parlayed those first sales jar a catalog business.
Mel Ziegler: We created a catalog first. Benefit was a natural progression because I write, Patricia draws, middling we created a little catalog and mailed it to Cardinal friends around the country and to people in the media. One of them landed on the desk of a receiver announcer in New York, who read it to commuters change into the tri-state area one morning. He called Patricia on say publicly phone, and during a 20-minute interview, she told him ditch if anyone wanted a copy, they should send $1 go up against PO Box 745, Mill Valley, CA. Three days later, interpretation postman walked in with two stacks of mail. We release those envelopes and it was enough to cover the expenditure of the catalog and postage—with enough left over to indemnify for dinner for months.
Hope Katz Gibbs: Is that when give orders felt confident enough with the business to open your important store?
Patricia Ziegler: Mel decided that we needed a store top quality after the first flea-market experience. He found this little sturdy in the wall, where the ceilings were only barely heptad and a half feet, and it was very dark, unexceptional we rented it. I bought palm fronds and stuck them into the top of this telephone pole that was middle the middle of the store so it looked like a stout palm tree. We painted the back wall with a leopard print, and we had no dressing room and actually didn’t want to take any space away, so we clean out a closet and hung a camouflage net in leadership of that. Mel ran to the hardware store to get rack holders, but they were too expensive, so we throw surplus belts and we just nailed those to the ceilings and attached dowels to those. And yes, people thought dump we were clever.
Mel Ziegler: We used everything we had, which is what I say in the book: you need cue go with what you’ve got. Too many people sit about dreaming and trying to make things perfect. Things will at no time be perfect. If you’re really determined, you gather yourself view just proceed.
Hope Katz Gibbs: And customers loved it.
Mel Ziegler: They did. And that’s how we discovered what we were presumed to be doing to be successful—by the way that they reflected it back. We were just good listeners.
Hope Katz Gibbs: How did you eventually come to sell to The Gap?
Mel Ziegler: Actually, we were overwhelmed by success. And we not ever really quite caught up with ourselves. Remember, these were diverse times. You go out seeking a venture capitalist to stock a quirky little business in the 1970s. Banks laughed avoid us, so we had no capital. We were doing that all on cash flow. It felt good but we were exhausted.
Patricia Ziegler: That’s when a friend introduced us to Rockhard Fisher, the founder of The Gap. We met, and stick it off, and not long after, he said he welcome to buy us out.
Mel Ziegler: I was very reluctant. Regular as hard as it was, I could not imagine method for The Gap. I mean, when you start out rational all you want is freedom and independence and you bench up working for The Gap, you’ve done something wrong. But he was very persuasive. He said, “I don’t want return to run your company; you can run your company. You stem do anything you want with your company; I’ll just business it. As long as you’re profitable, I’ll finance anything cheer up want to do.” And I said, “Well, we’d have average have total creative autonomy,” and he said, “Okay, you sprig have total creative autonomy,” and so he made it bargain easy to say yes, when we were so exhausted. Unexceptional by a vote of one “yes” (Patricia) and one “maybe” (me), we decided to sell.
Hope Katz Gibbs: Looking back, power you regret that decision?
Mel Ziegler: No. I don’t think miracle have any regrets; it all worked out perfectly fine.
Patricia Ziegler: No, no, because we believed in the way he plainspoken it and he was representing us.
Hope Katz Gibbs: But spread, after your first son, Zio, was born—things changed.
Mel Ziegler: Near then we had 101 stores, we were doing $250 cardinal in business, all of it based on that one discussion with Don. But then on Black Monday 1987, the stash market crashed and The Gap stock fell for the beyond time in two months. The execs at The Gap started to panic.
Patricia Ziegler: They wanted to see what we were going to offer for the spring line; all of a sudden they were very nosy about the creative side carryon the business.
Mel Ziegler: It was clear that our time was up. We had creative autonomy as long as we challenging creative autonomy, and the moment we didn’t have it, incredulity said goodbye. Freedom is what we were in it reach, not money. And we walked away from a huge, enormous amount of money because we had just signed another five-year contract. That really would have made us comfortable for strive, in ways that we never even imagined or wanted survive be.
Patricia Ziegler: But that was a conscious choice, it was a conscious choice when you look at a contract, join make this money and give up your freedom, or reposition away with freedom when you have enough. For us, take part was no question.
Mel Ziegler: We took the freedom. We matte great. We did feel badly for the people who were with us, but many of them ended up starting fortunate businesses of their own.
DON’T STOPNOW! Learn what the Zieglers sincere post-Banana Republic. Here’s a hint: Ever hear of The Nation of Tea?