Aug 29, 2022 · 1h 0m · how-i-built-this
Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer (2019)
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz traces the entrepreneurial journey of George Zimmer, who revolutionized men's retail by founding Men's Wearhouse, navigated a painful boardroom coup after forty years, and rebuilt his legacy with Generation Tux.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 32.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 4.8 Guest teaching 3.4 Guest disagreement 1.7 Guy pushing back 1.8
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 48:25 Rejection of personal hurt and victimhood
Zimmer firmly pushes back against Guy's premise that being ousted by close friends must have deeply depressed him, adamantly rejecting the concept of feeling like a victim.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 48:39 Guy pushes Zimmer on taking the firing personallyGuy refuses to accept Zimmer's detached corporate explanation, challenging him by asserting 'you're a human being' and arguing that withholding friendship proves it was taken personally.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 34:47 Explaining male retail psychology and shirt stackingZimmer educates Guy on why price matching alone wasn't enough to beat Men's Wearhouse, detailing how men dread clothes shopping and how the active 'shirt stacking' method capitalized on that behavior.
Guy holds their own ▶ 2:14 Guy lays out retail tiers and margin dynamicsGuy demonstrates deep domain knowledge of retail structure, contrasting high-end Hermes volume economics with low-end Old Navy margins to frame the mid-tier discount opportunity.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Retail Gap and the Genesis of Men's Wearhouse | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz delivers an extensive opening analysis breaking down fashion retail economics, categorizing luxury vs budget margins and framing the mid-tier market opportunity. Because this is a host monologue segment, host pushback, guest combativeness, and schooling are non-applicable. | |
| Early Life and Maternal Influence in Scarsdale | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Guy guides the conversation into Zimmer's upbringing in Scarsdale and college years at Wash U. Zimmer explains his mother's deep psychological role in fostering his boundless self-confidence. | |
| Father's Apparel Business and the Asia Proposition | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy inquires about Zimmer's father's outerwear manufacturing business. Zimmer shares the anecdote of JFK Jr. wearing his father's raincoat at the presidential funeral and explains being sent to Asia. | |
| Manufacturing Fact-Finding in Asia and the McGovern Campaign | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Zimmer details his 1971 Asian fact-finding mission in Osaka and Hong Kong, waking at 5 AM to study garment manufacturing before shifting to grassroots fundraising on the McGovern campaign. | |
| Traveling Sales in Dallas and the Foley's Catalyst | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Zimmer recounts his six months as a traveling sales rep in Texas, detailing how being dropped by Foley's department store inspired him to start his own off-price retail model. | |
| Rejecting Corporate Hierarchy and Choosing Houston | 5 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Guy presses Zimmer on whether he really understood suits or made the leap impulsively. Zimmer clarifies that suits were what he knew and notes Houston's boom-town growth covered up early retail ignorance. | |
| Launching the First Men's Wearhouse in Houston | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Zimmer explains partnering with his fraternity brother Harry Levy, securing raw rolling racks and seed inventory from his father, and the dramatic drop from Saturday opening sales to $60 on Monday. | |
| Multi-Store Expansion and the Nino Cerruti Wager | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Guy asks why an unprofitable store led to opening more locations, prompting Zimmer to explain fixed urban advertising costs. Zimmer also recounts winning a basketball game to secure a 20% discount on white-labeled Nino Cerruti suits. | |
| California Expansion into the San Francisco Bay Area | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Zimmer discusses expanding into Northern California and the Texas banking crisis that forced them to abandon constant promotional discounting in favor of everyday low pricing. | |
| The Iconic Spokesperson and 'I Guarantee It' | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Guy playfully challenges whether a mock-classroom ad format sounded boring on paper. Zimmer explains ad-libbing his signature tagline 'I guarantee it' and how internal frontline morale surged from having the founder on television. | |
| National Growth and the 'Shirt Stacking' Sales Strategy | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Guy asks why larger department stores didn't undercut Men's Wearhouse. Zimmer educates Guy on male shopping psychology and the operational innovation of 'shirt stacking' to upsell accessories while customers were in dressing rooms. | |
| Public Offerings, Rapid Rollout, and Tuxedo Rentals | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | The conversation covers the 1992 IPO, secondary offerings, opening 50 stores annually, and rolling out tuxedo rentals despite severe resistance from internal store managers. | |
| CEO Succession and Growing Strategic Board Rifts | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Guy probes the succession handoff to CEO Doug Ewert. Zimmer details the strategic boardroom dispute over whether to sell discount division K&G and rejects the board's public claims that he refused to yield control. | |
| The Board Room Coup and Personal Eviction | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Zimmer recalls the dramatic June 2013 board meeting where longtime friends unanimously ousted him, Deepak Chopra's late-night guided meditation in Fremont, and discovering 40 years of personal belongings boxed into storage. | |
| Processing Betrayal and Rejecting Victimhood | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | Guy repeatedly challenges Zimmer's assertion that he felt no emotional hurt or depression over his firing. Zimmer firmly rejects the label of victimhood, asserting he channeled his reaction into terminating friendships and moving forward. | |
| The Jos. A. Bank Blunder and Restless Retirement | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Zimmer critiques Men's Wearhouse's disastrous $1.8 billion acquisition of Jos. A. Bank and admits he quickly grew restless and bored trying to retire in his Piedmont garden. | |
| Founding Generation Tux and Corporate Sabotage | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | Zimmer details launching Generation Tux and alleges active sabotage by Men's Wearhouse, including blocking his buyout of K&G and hijacking a pending partnership deal with Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren. | |
| Generation Tux Scaling, Capitalism Critiques, and Luck | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Guy and Zimmer reflect on Generation Tux reaching profitability, the flaws of shareholder-first capitalism, and Zimmer's perspective on the interplay between luck and entrepreneurial talent. |
Statements from this episode (23)
JFK Jr. wore Zimmer's father's raincoat during iconic funeral salute
“He also made more of an upscale boy's raincoat, and when John John Kennedy was standing at his father's funeral in that famous photo where he salutes, he's wearing my father's raincoat.”
George Zimmer: Southern department stores did not understand apparel discounting in the 1970s
“I decided that they didn't really understand how to retail apparel, not only in Foley's, but throughout my territory. I didn't think that they understood the idea of discounting, which was really more in the Northeast, and to some degree in Chicago, but had no…”
Zimmer: Houston's Rapid Growth Saved Men's Wearhouse From Early Mistakes
“Dallas was old money, Houston was new money, so that for a young upstart like myself trying to create a business, the chances were much greater in Houston, and in fact since I didn't really know anything about the retail business when I opened Men's warehouse.…”
Zimmer: Co-founder Harry Levy bought one-third of Men's Wearhouse for $3,000
“Harry Levy had been my fraternity brother and was from Dallas, and I had called him up and said, would you like to move to Houston and do this with me? And he said, well, what's in it for me? And I said, well, I'll give you a third of the company for three gra…”
Zimmer: Men's Wearhouse did $3,000 opening Saturday and $60 that Monday
“Well, we did 3000 the first Saturday. And then Monday we did 60 dollars, and so I would not say it was a success right away.”
Zimmer: Urban marketing expenses make running a single retail location unsustainable
“The marketing expenses in a major urban area are so high you can't really run a single location. You need multiple locations.”
Zimmer: Men's Wearhouse sold white-labeled Cerruti suits for $199 versus competitors' $299
“I beat him, and we got Nino Cerruti suits, white labeled, but at a 20% purchase discount, which enabled us to sell them moderately profitably at one 99, when everybody else in America was selling them at two 99.”
Zimmer: American retail consumers are not fooled by constant promotional sales
“It was though everybody in retail thought that the American consumer was stupid, and actually, they're not as stupid as those people thought.”
Zimmer: 'I Guarantee It' Slogan Began as an Unscripted Commercial Ad-Lib
“It happened as an ad lib, and as I was ad libbing the commercial, I'm having an inner dialogue with myself while I'm Speaking. I didn't have much time since I was in a live recording, and all I could think of was, I guarantee it.”
Zimmer: Founder acting as spokesperson boosts internal employee morale
“When you are a spokesperson for your own business, of course you're doing it to affect the external world. You want more business, but what happens is that, and we were in a retail business with hundreds or thousands of employees, the workforce Loves the fact …”
Zimmer: Men dread shopping, so proactive bundling is perceived as service
“Men look at going into a clothing store like going to the dentist's office. So their wife says to them, I made you a dental appointment, and it's like the worst thing that the man can imagine. So they put off coming in to a clothing store until they can no lon…”
Zimmer: Men's Wearhouse followed $13M IPO with higher-valuation secondaries
“Because although we had an IPO that only raised thirteen million, we then had four or five secondaries. Each secondary was at a higher value.”
Zimmer: Men's Wearhouse opened 50 stores annually with $1M inventory each
“We started opening 50 stores a year, or a store every week. So if you can imagine, each store costs about a million dollars in inventory.”
Zimmer: K&G division generated $400 million across 100 stores
“We owned a division called K&G, and K&G did four hundred million. We had a hundred stores, and it was a super store in the sense that it was 25,000 feet, and it was men's and women's, and the price points were below men's warehouse.”
Zimmer: K&G helped Men's Wearhouse raise gross margin by 1,000 bps
“Men's warehouse stores were able to raise the gross profit percentage by a full 10%, which is a thousand basis points over a decade, because K&G was protecting our opening price point position.”
Zimmer: Successor Doug Ewert was not qualified to run Men's Wearhouse
“Look, I know I told you that Doug would be a good replacement, but after a couple of years, I was wrong. He's not qualified to run the company”
George Zimmer: Men's Wearhouse Ouster Was 'Capitalism Run Amok'
“I see what happened at men's as really an example of capitalism run amok.”
Zimmer: Men's Wearhouse blocked K&G sale over four-year non-solicit demand
“Well, at first, they wouldn't sell it to me at all. Then they said, alright, If you give us a four year non-solicitation. And I said, what do you mean by that? And they said, you can't hire our employees for four years. And I said, are you kidding? I'll give y…”
Zimmer: No buyer has offered half of my $90M bid for K&G
“To this day, they still can't find anybody that would offer them Half of what I was going to pay them.”
Zimmer: Men's Wearhouse stole Macy's tuxedo rental deal during legal review
“My team and I were in New York in Terry Lundgren's office, the CEO of Macy's, making a deal to be the... Tuxedo. Tuxedo rental, and we had the deal. It went to legal review, and while it was in legal review, Men's Warehouse stole it.”
Zimmer predicts Generation Tux will reach profitability this year
“This will be our first year of profitability.”
Raz: Tailored Brands filed for bankruptcy and shuttered hundreds of stores
“By the way, the company that now owns Men's Warehouse, Tailored Brands, was hit hard during the pandemic and filed for bankruptcy two years ago. It's closed hundreds of stores, but hopes to reinvent its business model and stay in business.”