Tired store design that needs a shot in the arm and drab, monochromatic stock options are at the heart of Gap’s problems.

Attending a Retail Week dinner last week in which the great and good of retail design mixed, talked and ate, a Powerpoint-free presentation was given (with ceiling projections controlled from the speaker’s Apple Watch, natch) that highlighted the plight of Gap.

The view given was that this was a retailer that had been exciting when every element of the brand was micro-managed by Mickey Drexler, who was its chief executive until his abrupt departure in 2002.

Today however it looks like the great unwanted, and perhaps even unvisited if the Sale signs, rarely absent from its store windows, are anything to go by.

With this in mind, 175 Gap stores are to go in the US and an unspecified number of European stores will follow suit.

This is an outfit that is in trouble and for the most part that trouble stems from two colours – blue and beige.

Casual conservative

Time was when there was a bit of colour in Gap, but walk into a store today and these two hues are really the only game in town. It’s as if the denim department, where blue tended to be found in a Gap store back in the day, has taken over to the exclusion of almost everything else.

“What once looked stylish, in terms of interior fit-out and store design, now looks bland, middle-American and not a little tired”

John Ryan

Now couple this with the fact that what once looked stylish, in terms of interior fit-out and store design, now looks bland, middle-American and not a little tired, and the recipe for failure is at an advanced state of preparation.

All of which does not escape one pertinent fact. You could get away with much of this if the merchandise was not so intrinsically casual conservative.

This is a retailer that has moved from being part of the 1969 counter-culture of its founding year, to serving as a bastion of the casual middle-ground – and colour, real colour, forms little part of this.

Even those of advancing years occasionally yearn to demonstrate a flicker of rebellion and Gap struggles to cater to this impulse.

The store design varies from location to location, but this is a retailer that currently fails the ‘remove the name from the door and work out where you are’ test. In truth you could be anywhere because Gap lacks a meaningful brand identity.

All of which notwithstanding, it is still the stock wot done it. If this were better and less monochromatic in tendency, then a multitude of sins would probably be overlooked.

It looks like a long road back for this one, in-store and out of it.