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No one in my family had a retail or marketing background. They were professionals. They didn't understand just what I was doing by going into retailing. After I started, though, it got into my blood. I knew this was what I wanted.

Maybe I was born to be a merchant, maybe it was fate. I don't know about that. But I know this for sure: I loved retail from the very beginning.

My first job was in retail at the age of 14, and I have worked in the industry ever since.

Like many entrepreneurs, I started out in sales. I began at 14, when I got a job selling shoes and tennis rackets at a pro shop, and I've been selling one thing or another ever since.

One of the people who most influenced me was Ben Shapiro, a marketing professor at the business school. He used to rant and rave and pound his fist: 'It's all about the customers!' And he was right. He was also right that, at that time, retailing was devoid of really talented people; he urged me to go in that direction.

When I was 15, I got a job at the first Hollister that opened up.

People are always going to go shopping. A lot of our effort is just: 'How do we make the retail experience a great one?'

I've never worked in a retail store, but I did sell shoes at Gimme Shoes in San Francisco, a job I was fired from.

I spent my teens and early 20s shopping almost exclusively at thrift stores.