MILLARD DREXLER

People like consistency. Whether it's a store or a restaurant, they want to come in and see what you are famous for.

A merchant is someone who figures out how to select, how to smell, how to identify, how to feel, how to time, how to buy, how to sell, and how to hopefully have two plus two equal six.

Creativity runs on automatic, no matter what's happening in other parts of my life. I can't help myself. It's been in me, and it evolves in me over the years. It's a condition in me.

I'm always looking over my shoulder, needing to stay ahead of the game.

The first thing you see when you walk into a store is color.

If you don't get trained for your SATs in America today, you are at a disadvantage. Training is expensive and a lot of kids don't get trained, perhaps. So I also identify with the kid or the person who has grown up in environments like I've grown up in.

I don't buy art. I'd rather buy a beautiful location or a beautiful site than buy art. A beautiful home is like owning a beautiful painting, except you can live in it.

I spot detail quickly.

I'm looking for best practices constantly. Apple has beautiful design, beautiful product, incredibly functional. But mostly it's about picking product, getting behind it, marketing it and introducing it to a customer. What they've done just inspires me.

What matters is hard work, and emotional intelligence.

I love to work. I have a passion for what I do.

I'm an agent of change all day long, and I want to meet other people like that.

People put 'study abroad' on their resume. I actually like when they don't study abroad because that means they aren't entitled.

I consider a merchant someone who has a certain intuition and instinct, and - very important - knows how to run a business, knows the numbers.

I like to prove things wrong.

My management style is there is no such thing as non-important people in the company.

I like someone who's focused and can tell me what they've done well and not well and who's very open, honest, and self-aware.

Christopher Columbus discovered America in a blue-and-white sailor shirt, and since then, men have been wearing blue and white shirts.

In a business, you have a vision, and you follow the vision. You have to execute. And then you have to learn how to run a good business. And I think if you look at the characteristics of any successful fashion business, it's all about that.

We have secured names and trademarks with either loose ideas or intentions, or with our imaginations. Sometimes things come of it, or they don't.

It is our job as always to focus on what we can control in the business.

I loved the fact that if you put goods on the floor, you could watch them sell.

Steve Jobs, if he had lived, was gonna design an iCar. I think cars have an extraordinary opportunity for cool design.

The person is a resume, not what's on a piece of paper. Whoever gives advice about resumes in college should be dismissed. Titles don't matter. GPAs don't matter, nor does what school you go to.

When I was young in the business, I felt anything I wanted to buy personally and professionally was always too expensive.