Vague references to American tradition are all well and good when you’re just trying to move some madras shorts—but when you’re decorating your house you should make sure that the fantasy old-timey United States you’re worshipping isn’t actually fantasy old-time Confederate States of America. Just ask J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler.
Robert De Niro turns 66 today. Sean Penn is turning 49. Controversial book publisher Judith Regan is 56. Yankees star Jorge Posada is turning 38. J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison are both turning 65 today. John McDonald, the restaurateur behind Lure Fishbar, Chinatown Brasserie, and the now-closed Lever House, is 41. Jonathan Franzen, the author of The Corrections, is 50. E! host Giuliana DePandi Rancic is 34. Nicola Kraus, the co-author of The Nanny Diaries, is 35. Hollywood exec Gail Berman is turning 53. Singer Belinda Carlisle is 51. Retired tennis player Jim Courier turns 39. Donnie Wahlberg is turning 40. Former Senator Norm Coleman is 60. And Rick Hilton, father of Paris and Nicky, turns 54 today.
Luxer-than-thou retailer J. Crew has mostly avoided the economic pinch, since its customers barely notice that they're paying $4 a gallon for gas. Instead, the retailer has been laid low by buggy software, reports the Business Technology blog. One outraged customer, shown here, was billed $9,208.50 and shipped baby-size shirts, not the mediums he'd ordered. J. Crew's net income in its most recent quarter fell 12 percent from the same period last year to $18.1 million, and the company said it spent $3 million to fix the problem. Do the math: Had J. Crew not had the software problem, its income would have been up 2.5 percent. It's a shameful comeuppance for J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler."Retail is detail; Mickey lives that," a Wall Street analyst told the New York Times in March for a profile which tracked Drexler's obsessive visits to stores, where he talked to customers at length about style and fit. Alas, no such attention to detail was on display when it came to J. Crew's website — which increasingly is how customers interact with the company. Drexler reads and answers a lot of email, according to the Times. But it sounds like he should spend less time in stores, and more time camped out in the datacenter.
The man who built the Gap into a multi-billion dollar retail powerhouse, Drexler was inglorious evicted from the company's top slot in 2002. He's now the chairman and CEO of J. Crew.
