Pubdate: Sun, 21 Feb 1999
Source: San Francisco Examiner (CA)
Copyright: 1999 San Francisco Examiner
Contact:  http://www.examiner.com/
Forum: http://examiner.com/cgi-bin/WebX
Author: Michael Dougan of The Examiner Staff

THE SUIT BEHIND THE MEN'S WEARHOUSE

Once George Zimmer battled the Establishment. Now he dresses the
Establishment.

Zimmer, 50, was a prototypical child of the '60s, sallying forth in
bell-bottom jeans to agitate against the forces that emblazoned names -
Birmingham, My Lai, Kent State, Watergate - onto America's guilt map.

Today he owns a suit - thousands of suits, millions of suits - and the only
memento of his days as a student radical is a framed front page from the
Houston Post, displayed like a trophy on the wall of his corporate office.
The banner headline reads: "Nixon Resigns."

This is the office from which he expects to sell a billion - with a b -
dollars worth of suits in 1999. Zimmer, founder of the 420-store Men's
Wearhouse, practically guarantees it.

Unlike most megamillionaires, Zimmer has ignored the axiom that we become
more conservative in direct proportion to the amount we have to conserve.
Zimmer clings to the largely New Age and left-wing philosophies of his youth
and - to the occasional dismay of his business partners - proclaims them
loudly and in public at every opportunity.

How radical is he? Get this:

Zimmer, who owns more than $70 million in Men's Wearhouse stock, thinks the
55 percent federal inheritance tax is just great. Find another man that
well-heeled who would concur. Just try.

Zimmer - whose face is as famous as the Maytag Repairman's because he stars
in his own commercials, notable for the tag line, "I guarantee it!" - has
put a new spin on the weary admonition to "think globally, act locally."

When Zimmer thinks globally, money rolls in.

This month his firm purchased Moore's, a large Canadian clothing chain. He's
negotiating for retail outlets in Europe. From stores in 40 states, he hopes
to sell 3 million suits and sport coats in 1999, accounting for 10 percent
of those purchased throughout the country.

The global Zimmer is building a haberdashery empire.

Locally, Zimmer follows his populist heart.

A proud Oakland resident, Zimmer has poured money and energy into that
city's troubled zoo, helping transform it into a point of local pride.

In 1996, he provided more than $250,000 in funding to the successful
Proposition 215 campaign, which legalized the medical use of marijuana in
California.

And he has joined baseball executive Andy Dolich and Hall of Famer Joe
Morgan in an attempt to buy the Oakland A's. Though Zimmer says the price
remains unrealistically high, and the deal isn't likely, he insists his
motive is merely to see his favorite baseball team stay in town.

"I never looked at it as an opportunity to make money," he said during an
interview for an Examiner / KTVU Channel 2 report.

Houston to Oakland

Zimmer moved to the East Bay from Houston 15 years ago, drawn by affordable
real estate. Now his Men's Wearhouse headquarters fills a sprawling,
one-story building in a Fremont business park.

He lives in a modest but charming 2,200-square-foot home in "a very
middle-class neighborhood" in Oakland. The driveway holds his faded gray
1991 Volvo station wagon.

"I love it here," said Zimmer, as he and his family - wife, Lorri, and
children Matt, 15, and Sarah, 14, both from his first marriage - sat before
a roaring fire in the den.

"I actually in my radical way enjoy it when people come to the house for the
first time because the reality of my house and what you expect it to be are
divergent," he said.

He agrees with Mayor Jerry Brown - whom he admires - that Oakland "really is
a city of the future."

What Zimmer likes about Oakland - its ethnic diversity - is reflected in his
hiring practices. He said more than half his Men's Wearhouse employees
nationwide are members of minority groups.

All work in what Zimmer calls "a prototypical New Age business, even though
it's an old-fashioned business."

Trade-journal writers routinely express amazement at how Zimmer pays his
employees 15 percent more than competing chains, spends four times as much
to train them (each new hire is flown to San Francisco for a week of classes
at Zimmer's "Suit University" ) and lectures them on such concepts as
synchronicity and integration of mind, body and spirit in pursuit of sales.

"It's really nothing that a 12-year-old couldn't understand," he said. "It's
just about being a human being."

For 13 years, Zimmer's face - already familiar to employees, whom he visits
at Christmas parties around the country each year - has been beamed into
America's living room. He had decided to become his own pitchman.

"I didn't think there was any hired actor who could project the credibility
and passion I have for this business, because this really is the business of
my heart," he said.

During one taping, Zimmer tossed out an ad lib at the end. He meant to steal
the line spoken with gusto by actor Bill Murray in the "Stripes" movie:
"That's a fact, Jack!"

But it came out wrong. To his own surprise, Zimmer proclaimed: "I guarantee
it!" He's said it in every commercial since.

Zimmer's fervent interest in progressive politics is matched, however
paradoxically, by his obsession with suits. His own, in particular. Zimmer
claims half-jokingly that his first marriage ended in divorce because he
refused to wear any suit that didn't come off the Men's Wearhouse rack.

Zimmer can, in one breath, say "I look forward to seeing cannabis cafes in
downtown Oakland" and, in the next, declare that "a tie is part of the way
that a man presents his power."

Women and men, said Zimmer, "have a very different way of thinking about
clothing. . . . Women will tell you that, if it wouldn't be too much
trouble, they would like their men to put a little more thought into how
they dress. Men just put on what they can reach and usually it's what they
wore yesterday."

In this age of corporate-casual attire, said Zimmer, "the suit is probably
today underused. A lot of men are trying to figure out what business-casual
actually means."

But, he hastens to add, "I don't want to try to suggest that I think life is
about image rather than substance."

The substance of Zimmer's life is found in his Oakland home. It's here that
Zimmer engages in his favorite off-duty pastime: talking politics.

Zimmer said his interest in medical marijuana stems from the time his mother
underwent chemotherapy for cancer. "I suggested that she smoke marijuana (to
alleviate the side affects), and she looked at me like I suggested that she
blow up a building," he recalled. "She said, "Absolutely not,' and I said,
"OK.' "

"Rehab clinics the solution'

Zimmer also is incensed by the federal government's so-called war on drugs,
with its emphasis on imprisonment and interdiction.

"Everybody knows that the rehabilitation clinics are where the solution is
going to lie, and not in all these police and military operations," he said.

Zimmer has firsthand knowledge of rehabilitation clinics. Seventeen years
ago, he checked himself into a Sebastopol facility called Azure Acres for
treatment of alcoholism. Now any Men's Wearhouse employee in America who
suffers a substance-abuse problem can go to Azure Acres at company expense.

He opposes capital punishment, supports welfare reform and says this about
the Republicans who have led the presidential impeachment campaign: "I hope
America remembers."

Now, about that inheritance tax, the ultimate Big Government bugaboo of many
a multimillionaire:

"I'm going to pay gadzillions of dollars in that someday," he said with a
chuckle. "But my feeling about it is that it's appropriate, it's correct."

He spoke of immigrants who come to America not to get rich, but to offer
their children an opportunity that they never had.

"That's the great American tradition that distinguishes us from what
preceded us in the world," said Zimmer. "That's why you need an inheritance
tax. It's part of the tradition of giving every generation a fair shot and
not creating this aristocracy that Europe is living with."

Besides, said the world's richest suit salesman, money's not what life's
about.

"There are a lot of wonderful things you can have that create a balanced
life and a more peaceful life and a more loving life. It doesn't directly
relate to money and materialism and career and things of that ilk," he said.
"Hey, that's not like a big secret."

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