Lunch With J. Crew Mickey Drexler? Sure!

"Thanks!" to Roxy, Alli, Suninseattle, as well as Elaine (in this post), who shared the following Financial Times article that features an interview with Mickey Drexler. (Click here to read in its entirety as it is too long to re-publish here.)

Lunch With J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler
He wears a wrinkly button-down shirt.
By Vanessa Friedman
October 23, 2011

My lunch with Millard S. Drexler, the 67-year-old chief executive of J. Crew, ...turns out not to be a lunch. Or to be more specific: not just a lunch. It’s lunch, followed by a short walk, a couple of emails and two phone conversations.

It begins as just a lunch (a nice, two-hour one at Pulino’s pizzeria in New York) but later Drexler, known as Mickey, emails to say he realises he hasn’t answered one of my questions, has given it some thought and would be happy to discuss it if I want to have a phone chat. ...

“You know,” he says, leaning in, “wherever I go I always ask what the bestseller is. I was just in London, and I went to the Wolseley – have you been there?” I nod; whenever Drexler makes a reference, he always checks to see if you are familiar with it. “Great place, right? Well I was there for breakfast and lunch, and I asked the waiter what the most popular dishes are. Guess what he said?” he looks at me expectantly. I hazard: “Hamburger?”

“No!” he says. “Wiener schnitzel! I didn’t have that, but the guy I was with did; I had the second most popular: Cobb salad.”

Drexler was in London because J. Crew is in international expansion mode: in August they opened their first store in Canada and launched Canadian ecommerce; then they launched ecommerce in the UK and they are in the process of looking for a bricks and mortar space in England; next will come ecommerce in France and possibly Germany. Drexler wants a London store “because it really articulates what the brand is. It’s an emotional, visual experience in a way a catalogue or website is not.” He saw several areas, liked Covent Garden and the East End, but thinks Regent Street is the right place – though he adds, “But maybe I shouldn’t say this publicly? Maybe it’s not good strategy? Oh whatever, I’ll say it anyway.”

This does not surprise me: Drexler is famous for saying things that others in his position might not. It’s part of his not-typical-CEO schtick. For example, when I ask him what J. Crew was like when he arrived, he says, “A company with tasteless goods going nowhere.” He caused a ruckus in the industry a few years ago for getting into a heated argument with Burt Tansky, the lauded chief executive of Neiman Marcus, about whether consumers were going to stop spending and whether or not non-vertically-integrated retailers such as Neiman’s were toast, while they were on a panel together. ...

In the space, Drexler saw opportunity. He installed the loudspeaker system because, he says, “I couldn’t waste a second; I couldn’t be waiting for people to call me back,” and started redefining the brand as understandable, good quality clothes with a fashion edge. He gave significant power to designer Jenna Lyons, who had previously been buried in the women’s creative team, and last month they held their first presentation during New York fashion week; Ikram Goldman, owner of an influential Chicago boutique (and the woman who dressed Michelle Obama and her children in J. Crew) said it was “the freshest thing” she had seen. ...

This article mainly shares all the tidbits we already know about Mickey Drexler (like his work background, he use of a loudspeaker, mentoring Jenna Lyons, etc.) But it didn't share anything new about him. With that said, the article was still enjoyable. It kind of made me feel like I was there at the table- with the conversation going all over the place. ;)

What are your thoughts on the article? Does the interview make you like Mickey more or less? :)