Who founded The Gap clothing retailer in 1969?

Donald and Doris Fisher founded The Gap clothing retailer in 1969.

The couple opened the first Gap store in San Francisco, California. The original concept focused on helping younger shoppers find jeans that fit, along with music and clothing aimed at the youth market. The company’s name referred to the phrase “generation gap.”

Gap later grew into a major international apparel retailer and became the parent company of several brands, including Banana Republic, Old Navy and Athleta. Its early identity was strongly connected with denim, even though its range eventually expanded to broader casual clothing.

The Fishers are sometimes confused with founders of Levi Strauss & Co., the company that patented riveted blue jeans. Gap was a retailer founded nearly a century after Levi Strauss’s nineteenth-century business began.