The Gap. Have They Gotten Too Big?

The Gap. Have they gotten too BIG?

It really doesn't matter what city you are in when you decide to go the mall to go shopping, most shopping centers have generally the same genre of stores. These extend all the way from hair salons to jewelry stores, specialty stores to department stores. While each mall has there own "anchor" stores that signifies the elegance or character that they try to portray, most of the "common" stores stay relatively the same. Some of these include Foot Locker, Victoria Secret, Claire's, Lane Bryant, and the Limited. Even though all of these businesses make good profits every year, each one has had their own type of negative media attention regarding everything from use of sweatshops to the selling of adult magazine "accessories". Well, the Gap is no different.

The Gap wants to make it easy for you to express your personal style throughout your life. They attempt to do this by having several stores with different names and different clothing styles. From Gap Kids to the Gap, Old Navy to Banana Republic, even Piperlime, their new online shoe store, Gap is trying to get the business of every age group possible. Overall, Gap brought in $15.9 billion in net sales during 2006.

Gap goes through five phases every season rather than every year. These phases include; design and merchandising, planning and sourcing, production and marketing, distribution, and finally sales and analysis. Gap uses customer feedback to look for improvements that need to be made at the end of a season, then start the entire process over again. The Gap sees their clothing as a way for each individual to express himself or herself, and they try to stay up with all of the current fashions.

Gap prides itself on the way they care not only for their employees, but also for the environment and the communities where employees live and work. Gap also takes steps to ensure that the factories where their lines of clothes are made are up to par and that the workers in those factories are treated with dignity and respect. Since these factories are not owned by Gap they do regular inspections to insure that the factories meet the expectations set forth. While some companies say they improve their surrounding communities and then write checks, Gap is out in these communities putting their hands, instead of money, where their mouths are. Gap sees the work they do in communities not only as a benefit for the people who live there, but also as a way to engage their employees and attract consumers and investors. The targets of Gap's contribution to communities include youth between the ages of twelve and eighteen as well as women between the ages of eighteen and thirty.

Although the Gap claims to only use factories that meet their expectations there have been some allegations of child labor being used in one of the factories where Gap clothing is made. In response to these allegations Mark Hansen, president of Gap North America, said that the use of child labor is non-negotiable and that they will approach these allegations head on as they would with any other challenge. Hansen also stated that they had ceased business with twenty-three factories in 2006 due to code violations. Gap's first step was stopping production of the work order to avoid the clothing from being sold in stores. Shortly there after, Gap did call an urgent meeting with suppliers in order to reinforce the policies on child labor. While Gap can say they are fighting child labor, they really have no control over whom their contractors choose for production. In May of 2004 the Gap had admitted that forced labor, child labor, paying below minimum wage, physical punishment and coercion are some of the wide spread workers' rights violations occurring at many of its factories worldwide. If Gap is going to continue to use the 3,000 factories they have worldwide wouldn't it be beneficial to have more than 90 people who inspect them?

In response to the allegations in May of 2004 Gap put together