In this Hustle Con interview, host Tom Montgomery talks with George Zimmer, founder of Men’s Wearhouse and co‑founder of Generation Tux. Zimmer recounts how he launched Men’s Wearhouse in 1973 with $7,000 for rent and a $100,000 credit line arranged by his father, turning that modest start into a national brand. He describes the early advertising mix—newspaper, then a bold $35,000 TV buy that required additional inventory—and how the first TV spots generated rapid customer growth. Zimmer explains the evolution of the brand’s voice and taglines, from the early “only thing better than a friend in the business is a father in the business” to the iconic “I guarantee it” and later “You’re gonna like the way you look.” He emphasizes that advertising success rests on repetition and consistency more than creative novelty, while noting the shift toward social media for newer ventures like Generation Tux. The conversation explores generational differences in marketing philosophy—Zimmer’s baby‑boomer preference for reason‑driven messaging versus younger audiences’ emotional appeal—and the impact of technology, from manual inventory systems to today’s big‑data analytics. Finally, Zimmer discusses his second‑act motivations: legacy, proving that seniors can launch startups, and a commitment to conscious capitalism that balances shareholder returns with stakeholder well‑being.
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Well, George, thanks for taking the time. Uh, you're an incredible guy, fascinating guy. George and I got a chance to catch up earlier, uh, and I think you guys are really going to enjoy what he has to say. Um, so George, one of the things that we talked about was just how you got started in business, and I found it fascinating because, you know, when you were starting that business in 1973, it's just very, very different from the way that businesses are kind of started in San Francisco, Silicon Valley these days. So can you tell us about a little bit about kind of the founding of Men's Warehouse and how basically you started with $7,000 and a business plan?
Well, sure, Tom. I had 7 grand, which went for first and last month's rent, so that left us with a zero balance, and that's why the very first commercial that Men's Warehouse ever ran, I was not the spokesperson, the tagline was, "The only thing better than a friend in the business is a father in the business," and I had a father who was able to arrange $100,000 of credit so that I could actually have inventory when I started.
Okay, yeah, that's awesome. So, so you got started, $7,000, $100,000 of inventory. How did you make that first step towards finding customers and starting to build the, the mega brand that, you know, Men's Warehouse became?
Well, of course, the advertising, uh, originally was just newspaper, and then it morphed into, uh, television and radio. And this was before there were PCs and social media, so this was the way to develop a business. It was very different than the business I'm starting now, in which you have to lay out the entire business, spend all the money up front, and then hope that you were right and you get customers.
Yeah, yeah. And the TV side of things is amazing because I think I heard a stat that $6 billion went into kind of promoting your face on TV, which is just incredible. How did that first TV buy come into existence? Can you tell that story? Because I thought it was just amazing.
Well, I had a friend who— a new friend. I'd met him at a wedding in 1974. And he was in the advertising business in New York and talked to me about my startup and said, "You know, maybe I ought to look at putting the entire $35,000 advertising budget on television." I said, "Okay, we'll do that." We made some commercials and he flew down from New York and walked into our store and said, "You don't have enough inventory." I'm gonna delay the commercials by 30 days.
So, so you immediately after taking your $35,000 marketing budget, he says you have to spend that much more on, on inventory to actually even be able to run the $35,000 TV buy.
Exactly, yeah.
That's incredible. So first TV ad goes out, did it instantly work? Was it, was it the boon to your business that you were hoping it would be?
Well, back in the mid-'70s when, when this began, there were in most cities in the United States between 3 and 5 television stations. So when you ran a television commercial, you were getting a huge audience. So I would say within 3 weeks of starting On television, the business started to pick up and it basically continued that way with a couple of minor interruptions for the entire 40 years I was there.
And how did you evolve the brand from, you know, nothing better than that? The only thing better than having a friend in the business is a father in the business, to you're going to like the way you look, I guarantee it.
Well, you may recall that there was a movie in the '80s with Bill Murray named Stripes, and he has this famous line in the movie where he says, when asked if he's part of the United States Army, he says, "That's the fact, Jack." And I wanted to say that in an ad-lib at the end of an early commercial I did and realized that was inappropriate for commercial TV, so I quickly self-edited it to "I guarantee it," and then in the late '90s, a very smart television director inserted the words "You're gonna like the way you look" in front of "I guarantee it," and we thought that made it even more powerful.
And how much of that do you credit to your voice?
Well, uh, the way I look at advertising today is that advertising is more about repetition and consistency than it is creativity. Uh, now that may be changing as, uh, we move away from TV and radio and into social media, but my voice became what we used to say was, is that if somebody is in the kitchen getting a snack and the commercial comes on, they're still gonna know it's a Men's Warehouse commercial even if they can't see it.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was the voice that sold me my first suit, so I appreciate that. So you mentioned kind of creative. How do you— How do you see creative's role now that you're running Generation Tux and you're relying a little bit more on social media as opposed to the TV buys that you had built Men's Warehouse on?
Well, you know, looking at, for instance, your creative, it's fantastic and it presents for relatively with small dollars the opportunity to create a very positive brand image. So I think there's a fantastic opportunity today for young creatives in startups. But I still stick to that if you're looking for scalability in business, it's hard to get away from television. And it's hard to get away from repetition in advertising.
Yeah, I'm curious. So in terms of like spikes in Men's Warehouse, did you notice any big spikes along the way? I think there was that initial one, but that were associated with the branding or the content that you were developing or just merely repetition and expansion?
Well, I hadn't actually thought about that. I'm sure there were. Spikes, but for the most part, it was a fairly steady upward slope that Men's Warehouse enjoyed for a long time. I mean, up until 2013, certainly there was a downturn during the '08-'09 recession. There was a short down glitch after 9/11. For those that are old enough to remember when Wall Street dropped 500 points in one day in 1987. There are those types of one-off problems, but for the most part, it was really just running the same story over and over until, much like some of the other iconic campaigns, whether it's Mr. Whipple or Tony the Tiger or the Alka-Seltzer Man, you're not sure if you're getting sick of the commercial or actually starting to fall in love with it, but one or the other, I think it works equally well.
And so, you know, we talk about creating a brand. Were you, you know, was the brand that Men's Warehouse was building, was that very concerted, was that premeditated and you thought this is the exact sentiment I want this customer to have, or did it kind of naturally happen because you're a charismatic guy and have that illustrious voice that we can hear so well?
Well, I'm not sure how to answer that question. I mean, when I started Men's Warehouse, I really was going into business not to get rich, but because I wanted to be the architect of my own life, and I didn't want to have a boss telling me what I had to do every day or every week. I think as the company unfolded, one of the things that made the company successful was that it did follow my own personality and persona, and so we never had to change our corporate culture. Our corporate culture was from basically day one the same until the day I was fired. I believe in the 3 years since, uh, the culture has probably diminished.
Yeah, and you mentioned something interesting when we were talking, is, is the mission that you had in your advertising was not to, uh, sway someone with emotion, but rather present the information and let the customer make their own decision based on the information that you presented.
You know, I'm not sure— I'll tell this story, but I'm not sure that it's actually right, and the evidence would be what you're doing now in your company is not about the rational side of life, it's about the emotional side. That's what your marketing is, and most marketing is thought to be better if it speaks to the emotions and not to reason. But when I was becoming the spokesperson for Men's Warehouse, I wanted it to be based on reason and not on emotion. And so, for instance, we never used sexuality or scantily clad women as other clothing stores did to sell merchandise. We tried to make it about facts and value.
Do you think that has something to do with the product? Because, you know, business and kind of, you know, business attire is probably a little bit more rational, a little bit more concrete. What we're selling is a little bit more out there, a little bit more oriented towards the weekend, which maybe is a more emotional time.
You know, I think that it's more about the difference between your generation and mine. I think that baby boomers like to pride themselves on a surplus of reason and a shortage of emotion, and I think that your generation understands that it doesn't have to be an either-or proposition, and that it's probably more powerful to market with emotion.
Yeah, absolutely. So that kind of takes us to this generation. So you said kind of when you started Men's Warehouse, to get that freedom, you wanted to be your own boss. Now with Generation Tux, is that the same drive or is it something different?
No, it's totally different. When you have had a successful career for 40 years, you don't have to worry about being your own boss in your second act. This is really about, as it's evolved, about my legacy because I really would like to, number one, be successful, but I'd also like to send the message to my friends and family and to the general community that just because you're on Medicare doesn't mean that you're not capable of doing a startup. And so it's actually I wouldn't say it's as much fun the second time around, but it's close.
So, so you started one business in '73, one business in 2015 is when you guys went public, publicly launched. How different are these worlds of trying to build a brand?
Well, you know, since this is a mostly younger audience, I think one of the The biggest difference is that when I started Men's Warehouse, there were no computers to speak of, so we had a manual inventory control system that we created, which was with circles and an X through the circle when the garment was sold. If you can imagine, I ran the company for close to a decade with that inventory control system. Today, obviously with big data, there is so much information available that it really is not even like talking about the same thing anymore.
And how about like with the advent of the internet and branding and marketing, how has that changed?
Well, you know, we never had to be aware of where on our website we were losing traffic, right? That didn't exist even when Men's Warehouse developed a website in the '90s. You, back then, you were not able to look at page views and determine where people were dropping out. Now, with big data, you can get this incredibly microscopic look at what your customers are interested in and where you're losing their interest.
Yeah, absolutely. So, so speaking of customers, one of the things that you talk a lot about is this notion of conscious capitalism, of thinking about both the shareholders and the stakeholders, having an eye towards your customers, your employees kind of first and foremost, and that's something that I think is kind of tantamount to, or is just very important to success in kind of today's companies. Can you explain a little bit about kind of conscious capitalism and how you view its role in business?
Well, in 1992, when Men's Warehouse went public and I went to Wall Street to set it up, and explain my ideas on, I actually call it stakeholder capitalism,
