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Recommended Stories. In The Know by Yahoo. The Daily Beast. Yahoo Life. Men's Health. Patriots Wire. WGN - Chicago. The Burlington Free Press. Kansas City Star. Zimmer isn't just any clothier. He is the founder and the face of the Fremont, Calif. I guarantee it. The head of a Silicon Valley marketing agency says that message will be tough to replace.
He looks so good to men and women. He has been the brand. People have shopped there because of him. Many of Zimmer's loyal customers quickly jumped on social media, supporting the man they have seen on their television sets for years. I guarantee it," posted Jack Bagley to the bottom of this story.
Back to Article. Close Menu. The next morning, the directors asked Zimmer to resign and offered him a figurehead chairman emeritus position. He told them he'd have to think it over. Later that day, he turned them down. At that point, the board told Zimmer he was fired--and that his office had been packed up. That's Zimmer's version. The company declined to comment for this story beyond a pat statement wishing Zimmer success. But reacting to a wave of terrible press after the firing, the board released an unusual statement detailing its inner workings.
Zimmer "had difficulty accepting the fact that Men's Wearhouse is a public company," it read. Zimmer "refused to support the team unless they acquiesced to his demands" and "expected veto power over significant corporate decisions," including executive pay.
One important detail doesn't quite add up. Zimmer chose the board members over many years to reflect his eccentric leadership style--such as Chopra and lead director Bill Sechrest, a colleague of Zimmer's on the board of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Why would such a group unanimously turn against him so swiftly?
Several sources close to the situation suggest that Zimmer was simply much more estranged from the leadership than it appeared. Another explanation is that, in trying to take the company private, Zimmer not only betrayed the board's confidence but essentially put the company up for sale. Months after Zimmer's firing, Jos. Bank attempted a hostile takeover of Men's Wearhouse, which was forced to buy Jos. Bank at a price many considered inflated.
That deal is precisely what's put the company in peril today. The offices of zTailors and Generation Tux occupy the second floor of a former department store in central Oakland, across from where Uber is constructing its new headquarters, and look like those of other young startups.
There's a lounge area with red bubble chairs and a big swoop lamp, and a kitchen full of good snacks. His corner office is large but unassuming, with chalky white walls and mismatched chairs. Aside from the framed pictures of Zimmer with various luminaries Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Reggie Jackson , it could be your insurance guy's office. To hear Zimmer tell it, he bounced right back after his dismissal, but Hemmeter suspects it was a lot worse. It's his life's work, his identity, just going For a few weeks, Zimmer and Hemmeter talked with lawyers and PR people and private equity groups about attempting a takeover.
They didn't. The two considered franchising a popular local ice-cream-sandwich shop and expanding it across the Sunbelt. They talked about starting a Warby Parker-style eyeglasses company. Then they heard about a startup called The Black Tux that rented tuxedos online.
I'm probably the only guy in the world who knows that business at scale. The Black Tux denies it ever discussed numbers. Benioff had initially counseled Zimmer not to go back into business after the firing, because the outpouring of support had been such a powerful way to cement his legacy. Now Zimmer was telling him he wanted to create an online tux company, and Benioff, a bear of a man not known for being emotive, slowly turned to him with an ear-to-ear grin.
That is a killer idea," he said. Benioff's investment arm put in a seven-figure sum, and Generation Tux launched, amid much media buzz, at Salesforce's Dreamforce convention. Several months later, after Zimmer had started building his new company, he and a few key lieutenants went to Benioff's house for a meeting. It became clear they were flailing on some technical issues and missing internal deadlines, and lacked the expertise to fix the situation.
Benioff, realizing his friend needed help with the basics, explained he meant someone who defines site features and shepherds team members to build them. But what George brings to the table--it's so different from what you typically get in Silicon Valley. When Zimmer started planning Generation Tux, for example, he knew that delivering a proper fit is the biggest challenge in formalwear rental, so he devised a solution before launching.
Men's Wearhouse solved that problem by having a tailor in every store. By creating his online tailor network zTailors, Zimmer figured Generation Tux could have greater geographic reach than Men's Wearhouse, and could dispatch a tailor for touchups on the day of an event. Generation Tux's revenue, while growing, is still small.
Zimmer says he doesn't expect it to turn a profit for at least another year. The task for now is figuring out ways to re-create all the in-person sales tactics that push up order size--for instance, getting a bride and groom's dads and granddads to order suits alongside the groomsmen.
At Men's Wearhouse, the average number of tuxes rented for a typical event was eight, Zimmer says; at Generation Tux, he told me, it's fewer than five. Zimmer had thought zTailors might take off as a consumer brand, because it stitches together an industry consisting almost entirely of mom-and-pop shops. Instead, it's showing more promise as a business-to-business operation.
A deal with Macy's offers house-call tailoring for Macys. It's easy to see why. The ever-rising cost of shipping, coupled with the increasingly standard e-commerce practice of free returns, can devastate online retailers. What if, rather than returning or exchanging an item that doesn't fit, a customer could just summon a tailor to adjust it? Retailers could keep the sale as well as save on shipping.
For zTailors, it's a perfect way to acquire customers and push up revenue, because once a tailor is in someone's house, other items that need fixing almost always come out of the closet.
And yet, as Zimmer and Hemmeter home in on their customers, Men's Wearhouse continues to dog them. Shortly after zTailors launched last spring, Men's Wearhouse prohibited its in-house tailors from moonlighting for Zimmer, despite its being common practice for them to work freelance for other retailers. Zimmer had leaned on his former Men's Wearhouse talent to build his initial roster of tailors--and in one move, Men's Wearhouse eliminated around of them.
Then a deal Generation Tux had made with Macy's to offer tux rental online and via in-store kiosks evaporated while in legal review. The business ended up going to--of course--Men's Wearhouse. Zimmer can't contain his sense of persecution about losing out so late in that game: "The deal makes no sense. It has to be just to block me.
Those battles aren't over.
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