Pete Nordstrom, president and chief brand officer of Nordstrom Inc., is wearing a new hat: podcast host.
The fourth-generation Nordstrom launched the “Nordy Pod” podcast series on Monday to give insights into the 120-year-old, family-run business and talk with people who have inspired the Nordstroms. First up: Millard “Mickey” Drexler, renowned for catapulting Gap and J. Crew and launching Old Navy and Madewell. Drexler is currently chief executive officer at Alex Mill, which specializes in updated classic styles for men and women, where he’s working with his son Alex, who founded the brand in 2012.
Pete’s next two Nordy Pods will be with his brother Erik Nordstrom, CEO of Nordstrom Inc., and their cousin, Jamie Nordstrom, president of stores, and with Megan Jasper, CEO of SubPop Records. The podcast includes conversations with customers and Nordstrom employees.
“This is not going to be a highly polished and scripted thing,” Pete said. “Clearly, I’m not a professional podcast host. But I have the great, good fortune to be exposed to so many interesting people and I’m excited to share those experiences.” The Nordstroms’ relationship with Drexler grew tighter when the Seattle-based retailer began selling Madewell in 2015 and Drexler was still running J. Crew and Madewell.
Talking with Pete at Nordstrom’s Manhattan flagship store, Drexler recounted his already well-documented experiences at Gap and J. Crew, the highs and lows, and advised Nordstrom to build “a powerful Nordstrom brand and take one department and make it fantastic,” though Nordstrom already offers products under its own label. The most refreshing moments of the podcast were when Drexler discussed leadership, working alongside his son, operating through COVID-19 and the importance of the workplace.
“I am personally very much against people not coming to the office,” Drexler said. “Someone just said to me, ‘You are old school.’ I might be old school but I need to bounce off other people. I need to check. I need to be there. I need to hear other people and what they are thinking. Everyday you feel an idea coming, or you see it. I think the right way to run a business is to have people working together.”
Drexler said the Alex Mill store on Mercer Street in Manhattan opened two weeks before the pandemic. “You kind of move forward no matter what the times are like.…You hit a wall, things look bleak. You don’t hold back. You do what you have to do to survive.”
He said the pandemic was “like no other thing I’ve seen in terms of stores empty. I didn’t go to my office. I was out of the office for two winters in a row. I was living in Miami for the winters. I didn’t realize what I missed. There are a lot of companies not back at work. For me, it wasn’t a huge decision [to return]. In the fashion business, the product business, it makes a huge difference being there in person. Not just for the fashion. Spontaneity, creativity, mixing with each other. With Zoom, you are kind of alone out there.”
Underscoring that CEOs should be accessible to their workers, Drexler said when he first arrived at Gap in San Francisco after running Ann Taylor in New York, “I felt very cloistered on the sixth floor. I went from 57th and Fifth [in Manhattan] to looking at the 280 highway, the airport and the cemetery [in San Francisco] and I asked myself, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ I grew up in The Bronx. I’m not a suburb guy.”
So at Gap, he moved his office to a glass-enclosed, tiny space, in the middle of the Gap floor. “Accessibility is critical. I always say a CEO works for all his or her associates, because who can get things done more quickly and more effectively than the so-called big boss. My feeling is I am their employee, and if they see me everyday as a normal guy, which I am, being nervous as hell when business gets bad, they don’t see that part.”
When he joined J. Crew, “The place was going broke. Every time I called someone, you got a voicemail. I got a loudspeaker. I moved my office to a table [outside] my closed office. Corporations shouldn’t be corporate. They should be open and the big bosses should be totally accessible. I admit I am not easy. Some people like to avoid me. That happens.”
Drexler joined the Apple board on the condition that Steve Jobs join the Gap Inc. board. Together they developed the Apple store format. “It was an amazing experience. I idolized Steve. Every board meeting Steve had was about the product. It was product, product, product. He didn’t give up on anything. He will figure out how to get you to do what he wants.” His one criticism of Jobs: “He was in his own world at times.”
Early in his career at Bloomingdale’s and Abraham & Straus (which Macy’s took over), what really irked Drexler was “when people didn’t say hello to me, particularly the big shots.”
He suggested that sizing up people interviewing for a job can be tricky. “If I see a résumé with six jobs a year each year, I am skeptical. I want to see something there with a little longevity.
“Sometimes you get fooled. Two people fooled me a lot. One is going to jail, on the college scandal. Your instinct on interviews is really important. You have to like them and they have to like you. If I see a fancy résumé, I always ask, ‘What’s here to impress us versus what you like doing?'”
Discussing his competitiveness and will to succeed, Drexler said, “I know where my drive came from. My mother had cancer the year I was born. It took her 16 years to die but she always worked. She needed to keep her mind occupied.” His father worked for a coat manufacturer and bought piece goods and buttons. “He and I didn’t get along, he wasn’t a warm, loving dad.”
He had a summer job at A&S in the young men’s jeans department. “I loved it. I loved the action. I did it for three months. I was making $125 a week. I never made that much money before.”
He shifted to Bloomingdale’s, where he made more money; worked at Macy’s, and eventually ran Ann Taylor, where he transformed the business by introducing the Ann Taylor Studio private label and grew the total business from $25 million to $65 million.
He got fed up with Ann Taylor when it became “too corporate” as part of the former Allied Stores Corp., and shifted to Gap, where he quickly recruited some former Ann Taylor executives to key positions. “The ship was sinking, but we turned it around in a year and half by overhauling the inventory, introducing washed jeans and redoing 400 stores.
“I felt the world needed good taste, good style at an affordable price. That was the mantra; it had to be curated, at the end of the day. I sat through every edit and selection of every style in all three companies” — Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy, which he started. Drexler was fired in 2002 when sales slumped but turnaround strategies he initiated took hold soon after he had been gone. “I was stunned. What bothered me most — no one on the board called me. I went to one person I thought had decency, civility, integrity. He wouldn’t talk to me. I had a few enemies in the company.” Only Jobs had called him the night before about what was coming down.
He subsequently ran J. Crew, turned it around, expanded it, took it public twice and gave the brand a reputation for selling designer-quality goods at lower prices, but left after a couple of years of slumping business. He also launched Madewell as part of the J. Crew Group.
On Alex Mill, Drexler said, “I love the challenge, I feel an obligation to provide a place for people to work and have fun. I explained that to Alex, that I am here. I want to create something that employs people in a very positive way and provides a future. I am kind of in a hurry to do that. That’s what drives me. I like the action. I could never sit home.”
On working with his son, Drexler said, “We have ups and downs. It kind of goes with the territory. It has not been easy. People say I am a difficult boss. I am his father first and that makes it more difficult for him and it makes it difficult for me a lot.”
He said the two have bumped heads on topics like Instagram and algorithms. “I admit ignorance on what an algorithm is, but when it starts to run a company, that’s it.
“On the Instagram disagreement, he asked me to please leave it alone. On certain things, I have to leave it alone. I have to learn how to do it better. With Alex, I have to learn to let it go at times. I have a very hard time letting things go. We’re working on it. When I see this son who I love like crazy, that is the most important thing.”