Donald Fisher

Donald George Fisher (September 3, 1928 – September 27, 2009) was an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He co-founded The Gap Inc. clothing stores with his wife Doris F. Fisher. Early life and education Fisher was born in San Francisco, California to a Jewish family, the eldest of three sons of Aileen Fisher (née Emanuel) and Sydney Fisher, a cabinetmaker. He spent his childhood in the then-middle-class Sea Cliff neighborhood of San Francisco. In 1951, Fisher graduated with a B.S. in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he was a member of the Theta Zeta chapter of the national fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon. After graduating from Berkeley, he served as a U.S. Naval Reserve officer and then worked for his father as a cabinet-maker for L. & E. Emanuel Incorporated, a mill and cabinet making firm created by his great-grandfather that his mother inherited after her father died. In the 1960s Fisher started his own business renovating hotels and bought the Capitol Park Hotel in Sacramento fortuitously leasing some retail space to Levi Strauss & Co. which opened a showroom. Lou Romanello, who managed the Levi's store first, had the idea for a "Wall of Levi's" containing many different sizes, something that had not been done before in department stores of the time. After unsuccessfully trying to return a pair of Levi's jeans that did not fit, Fisher noticed that most department stores only carried a few sizes; he realized Romanello was onto something. Fisher invited Romanello to partner with him, but Romanello was loyal to Levi Strauss and turned him down. Fisher and his wife went on to open their first store carrying all sizes of jeans and named it The Gap after the "Generation Gap". The store sold Levi's jeans as well as records and tapes in order to capture the 12-to-25-year-old target market. In 1972, the Fishers launched the Gap label, becoming the first chain in retail history to use its store name as the brand name. The Gap was a resounding success and filed for an IPO in 1973. They went on to purchase Banana Republic, a small, two-store mail-order catalogue business; and also founded Old Navy which reached $1 billion in sales in four years. Fisher served as CEO until 1995, chairman of the board until 2004, and as company director and chairman emeritus until his death.