Donald Fisher

Donald George Fisher (September 3, 1928 – September 27, 2009) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He co-founded The Gap clothing stores with his wife Doris F. Fisher.

For the long serving character in Home and Away, see Donald Fisher (Home and Away). For the American baseball player, see Don Fisher.
Donald Fisher
Born
Donald George Fisher

(1928-09-03)September 3, 1928
San Francisco, California, US
DiedSeptember 27, 2009(2009-09-27) (aged 81)
San Francisco, California, US
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
OccupationCo-Founder
The Gap clothing stores
Net worthUS$3.3 billion
Political partyRepublican
Spouse(s)Doris Feigenbaum Fisher
ChildrenRobert J. Fisher
William S. Fisher
John J. Fisher
RelativesB. J. Feigenbaum (father-in-law)

Early life and education

Fisher was born in San Francisco, California to a Jewish family,[1] the eldest of three sons of Aileen (née Emanuel) and Sydney Fisher, a cabinetmaker.[2] He spent his childhood in the then-middle-class Sea Cliff neighborhood of San Francisco,[1] He graduated from Lowell High School[1] in 1946, and then in 1951, graduated with a B.S. in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley.[1] He is an alumnus of the Theta Zeta chapter of the national fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon.[1] After school, he served as a U.S. Naval Reserve as an 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[3] that his mother inherited after her father died.[1]

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 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.[1] After unsuccessfully trying to return a pair of Levi's jeans that did not fit, he noticed that most department stores only carried a few sizes, Fisher realized Lou was onto something. Fisher invited Romanello partner with him, but Lou, a second generation Italian immigrant with an 8th grade education 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."[1] The store sold Levi's jeans as well as records and tapes in order to capture the 12-to-25-year-old target market.[1] In 1972, the Fishers launched the Gap label, becoming the first chain in retail history to use its store name as the brand name.[1] The Gap was a resounding success and filed for an IPO in 1973.[1] 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.[1] Fisher served as CEO until 1995, Chairman of the Board until 2004, and as company director and Chairman Emeritus until his death.[1]

According to Forbes magazine, his net worth was estimated to be US$3.3 billion. Fisher was a Republican, active in San Francisco politics. He was a founding Board Member of the Presidio Trust (the public corporation that runs the Presidio of San Francisco), a post nominated by the President of the United States.[4] He was married to Doris Feigenbaum, and was a long-time member of Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. Their three sons continue to manage the business.[5][6]

He was a non-executive director of Vodafone from 1999–2000.

Philanthropy

Fisher was active in several public education causes, including being a major contributor to KIPP charter schools—a national network of low-income, high-achieving college preparatory public charter schools: he was the chairman of the board of trustees of the KIPP Foundation, the non-profit central organization of the KIPP network.[7] He was also a contributor to Teach For America, GreatSchools.net, and EdVoice, a statewide coalition of California business leaders and others who support education reform. Fisher also served on the California State Board of Education. Fisher and his family donated a generous sum of money to Princeton University in 2006, and the Fisher Hall dormitory at Princeton's new residential college, Whitman College, is named for him.[8] He has also donated to charter schools and museums in San Francisco, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and paid for public sculptures in San Francisco.[4] In 2007, Fisher was honored as the Alumnus of the Year by the California Alumni Association at the University of California, Berkeley.[9] He also contributed to many Bay Area Jewish causes, including the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco and the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund.[5]

Art collection

Since founding the Gap in 1969, Fisher and his wife Doris began collecting contemporary Western art. In 1993, ARTnews Magazine declared Fisher one of the top ten art collectors in the world. His collection, largely housed at the Gap headquarters in San Francisco, includes comprehensive, career-spanning works by Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder and Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Chuck Close, and Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.

On August 8, 2007, Fisher announced plans to build a 100,000-square-foot (9,300 m2) museum in the San Francisco Presidio, tentatively named the Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio, to house his art collection. The museum, if it had been built, would have been larger than the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).[4] However, the plan engendered widespread skepticism and even outright antagonism among some historic preservationists in San Francisco.[10]

In July 2009, Fisher announced that he and his wife were abandoning their efforts to build the museum at San Francisco's Presidio, stating "Doris and I will take some time to consider the future of our collection and other possible locations for a museum, which could include other sites within the Presidio and elsewhere." [11] In September 2009, Donald and Doris Fisher decided to enter into a partnership with SFMOMA to display the collection.[12]

Death

One day after the San Francisco Chronicle article on the SFMOMA partnership, the Chronicle reported that Fisher died of cancer at home on Sunday morning, September 27, 2009.[13]

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References
  1. "Gap set to open in Israel". JTA. August 23, 2009. Retrieved July 1, 2010.
  2. "Don Fisher, 1928–2009 - Gap Inc. Founder" (PDF). The Gap Inc. Retrieved September 12, 2015.
  3. "San Francisco County Biographies". Ancestry RootsWeb.
  4. Cecilia M. Vega (August 7, 2007). "Donald Fisher, founder of Gap, offers to build a museum in the Presidio to house his art collection". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved August 8, 2007.
  5. "Gap founder Donald Fisher leaves stamp on community". j. The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California. October 1, 2009. Retrieved October 2, 2009.
  6. "#60 Doris Fisher". Forbes.com. 2005. Retrieved December 5, 2010.
  7. The Philanthropy Hall of Fame, Donald Fisher
  8. The Princeton Website Archived 2007-12-29 at the Wayback Machine
  9. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on November 12, 2007. Retrieved February 2, 2008.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) Donald Fisher honored as the California Alumni Association's Alumnus of the Year for 2007
  10. John King, "Architect Waxes Poetic With Presidio Museum", San Francisco Chronicle (March 18, 2008)
  11. John King, "Fishers Give Up on Presidio Art Museum", San Francisco Chronicle (July 2, 2009)
  12. "Fishers to Partner With SFMOMA on Art Collection", San Francisco Chronicle (September 26, 2009)
  13. Egelko, Bob; Said, Carolyn (September 28, 2009). "Donald Fisher, Gap co-founder, dies". Sfgate.com. Retrieved June 25, 2010.
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