From the hostile skies over Vietnam to the battlefields of women’s wear, Dan Skoda of Lake Forest has been there.
And as boss of Marshall Field’s and its sibling department stores for Minneapolis-based Dayton Hudson Corp., he has plenty of potential worries in the arena of retail combat. But something happened to him years ago that helped put everything in perspective.
“If it ain’t gonna kill you, then don’t kill yourself over it,” said Skoda, 52.
That is the point of view he carried away from his four years in the Navy and his combat missions over Vietnam, where he flew a fighter jet.
That is not to say that he takes his position in the pilot’s seat of retail lightly. It just means he keeps a cool head; panic has never been one of his traits. By all accounts, he is a wily retailer, having started at the bottom of the business while a freshman at C.W. Post College at Long Island University in Greenvale, N.Y.
Kit Hughes, vice president and general manager of Neiman Marcus’ Michigan Avenue store, said of her competitor and one-time co-worker, “Dan has a great work ethic. He’s been in the retail business a long time. He’s very directed at the mission of the business he’s running, and he knows how to get things done.”
Skoda began as a handbag stockboy at Best & Co., a 5th Avenue retailer that has since gone out of business. Working his way through the ranks, he also was a salesman, store detective, service manager, department manager and associate buyer before age 22.
Under normal circumstances, upon graduation with a business degree, he should have been ready for launch into the big time of the retail world at that point in 1968. But America was engaged in Vietnam, and his graduation meant he was prime material for the military draft. A family friend on the local draft board warned him that he was about to be drafted. So Skoda made a preemptive strike by enlisting in the Naval Aviation Program, figuring he preferred to fly over the rice paddies rather than wade through them.
“I went into the Navy as a 210-pound, beer-drinking college guy,” he said. “Within 16 weeks I was a 155-pound person who felt like I could tear trees out of the ground and catch bullets in my teeth.”
He didn’t do that, but he did do some damage. He left the Navy in 1973 as a decorated pilot, having received three air combat medals, each one signifying nine strike missions and 15 support missions; a Navy Commendation Medal; and six campaign ribbons for Vietnam.
“This was the most important thing that happened to me in my life,” he said. “It gave me tremendous perspective on what is and isn’t important. In the business world, particularly the fashion world, we tend to overreact to everything. When you have that kind of perspective, when you’ve been shot at or shot up, you really know what is and isn’t important.”
Other than the impact the Navy made, Skoda believes it was incongruous with the rest of his life. He loved retail and loved selling. “I had to do the Navy job, and I’m glad I did, but I wouldn’t want to do it again,” Skoda said.
Upon leaving the service, he landed in the Chicago area at Lord & Taylor.
He spent five years at that company, starting at Hawthorn Shopping Center in Vernon Hills as a store manager, then moving to the same position in the Fox Valley Shopping Center in Aurora and finally Water Tower Place on Michigan Avenue. During that time, Skoda developed close ties with Gary Witkin, who had been director of stores for Lord & Taylor. When Witkin moved to Neiman Marcus, he recruited Skoda to go with him.
Skoda joined Neiman Marcus in 1978, working first as assistant store manager at the Northbrook Mall. But Witkin had buying in mind for Skoda, who had performed that function primarily for boyswear and furnishings. Witkin thought the real buying jobs and real merchandising responsibilities came in women’s ready-to-wear.
“He wanted me to buy (for) the biggest sportswear department that Neiman’s had, which I did,” Skoda recalled. “One of my key resources was with Liz Claiborne. At the time, she was very exclusive. I used to work personally with her in her showroom, picking out patterns and picking colors and doing special styles for designs that were exclusive to Neiman Marcus. I’d go to stores and tell them how the clothes were exclusive designs for Neiman Marcus and how I’d worked with Liz Claiborne on color combinations and things like that. I enjoyed it.”
But throughout his retailing career, he vacillated between being a “merchant” and working in the stores.
“It’s really two different pipelines within our business. `Merchants’ are analytical, strategic thinkers, and their main job involves much more long-term planning, whereas the `stores’ people are more reactionary, tactical and emotional. I guess my personality flipped back and forth,” Skoda said.
In 1979, he was longing for store work again when his father died back home on Long Island, leaving Skoda’s mother alone. Skoda, one of four children, decided he wanted to go back to running a store and to return to New York state to be near his mother for a while, so he set about arranging a situation that could make the move work.
In White Plains, N.Y., was an unsuccessful Bergdorf Goodman’s store, also part of the Neiman Marcus Group, and the corporation had decided that Neiman Marcus should take over that store. “I went to the powers that be and told them I would like to open that store,” Skoda said. “In 1980, they appointed me vice president and general manager of that store.”
He spent the next five years getting that store up and running and in 1985 was elevated to vice president and general manager of the Michigan Avenue Neiman Marcus store in Chicago, and only a year later was made senior vice president/director of stores.
Then in August 1991, Witkin again called on his protege to join him at Marshall Field’s, where Witkin was president. “Dan was disciplined, highly intelligent, friendly and amiable,” Witkin said. “He is terrific with people, and he has a lot of energy. I knew he’d build Marshall Field’s reputation in Chicago, and he has.”
Skoda joined Field’s as executive vice president of stores and was appointed president on Dec. 15, 1991, when Witkin left to become chairman of Service Merchandise.
As president, Skoda’s job was to oversee all 24 Marshall Field’s stores, Hudson’s 20 stores and Dayton’s 19 stores.
“Dan has an extensive retail background in both merchandising and stores,” said Ertugrul Tuzcu, executive vice president of store operations for the department store division at Dayton Hudson. “He understands how to delight guests. He knows why we are here, and he has great vision for Field’s. He’s a spokesperson for Marshall Field’s, and he’s a passionate retailer.”
But one of his greatest challenges as head of Field’s would have little to do with retailing and a lot to do with humanity. It came in 1992, the Great Chicago Flood, in which a breach in the base of the Chicago River caused underground passageways in the Loop to flood.
He remembers arriving for work at the State Street store that day and seeing that the lights were out. Told why, he went into the basement to see the problem firsthand. When he saw the rising water, he thought, “Oh, shoot, we’re not going to be open for business this morning.” Then he thought, “We won’t be open for business today.” Even later he was told the store wouldn’t be open for months. Skoda couldn’t believe it.
“We had water in our third basement, where our utilities, power and everything else are located. In our second basement were all the stockrooms. The water was coming up to our market-place level (one floor below street level). At some point I realized it wasn’t the business that concerned me the most, it was the people,” Skoda said. “We had to tell people not to come to work, and there are 2,500 people employed at Field’s. They were all waiting to hear when they would come back to work.”
Skoda was at the forefront of the recovery effort. “Realizing how much they wanted to come back gave me such a drive to get us open faster than we said we’d be back, that we opened in a week,” he said. “I admit it was the worst six months of our lives. We had no air conditioning, and lights were hanging from the beams, but everyone was back to work. We did it as a team.” Skoda added with pride, “We were the first store to reopen.”
Also outside the realm of running stores, Skoda has become a leader in the civic arena.
An outside job occupying much of his time is as a mayoral appointee on the State Street Commission, composed of seven commissioners from the private sector and four from the public sector.
“Our job is to oversee State Street. We are concerned with such things as the development of State Street, including the entire renovation of the street, the reopening to vehicular traffic, marketing and the lighting of State Street during the holidays,” Skoda explained. “Our current project is an annualized marketing plan for State Street. Additionally, we are marketing to get more people to State Street year-round. It’s obviously a destination during holidays, but the rest of the year there are a lot of opportunities.”
Ted Ratcliff, general manager of the Palmer House Hilton and a fellow commissioner, said, “Dan is extremely dedicated to the advancement of Chicago as a place to visit. He’s a good intermediary for all of us.”
Skoda also donates time to the United Way of Chicago, serving as chairman of special events for the most recent campaign. Part of his mission is to get Michigan Avenue retailers and State Street retailers together to do events and campaigns to support United Way.
“This doesn’t seem so important until you realize the competitive nature of the retail business,” he said. “We as retailers never agree with anyone. We never share anything except who the thieves are. The only ones who talk to each other in our different stores are our loss-prevention people. So it was a humongous effort to get retailers to come together for a single purpose. My committee for United Way Day was the VP of Tiffany’s, VP of Neiman’s and the manager of Carson’s. We worked together and added about 10 new retailers that had never done campaigns before. We got gifts from retailers who had never given corporate gifts before.”
Mary Carr, regional director of United Way, has worked with Skoda on a number of campaigns. “In the early ’90s, as a regional chairman, Dan was responsible for helping to raise over $15 million for United Way. This year he has been instrumental in recruiting new accounts. He helps people see the way that people view United Way,” Carr said. “He’s a great role model for young CEOs. He’s a grand person to work with. His enthusiasm is infectious.”
And his enthusiasm reaches into his private life. As a scuba diver and skier, it is fortunate for him that he kept up with his flying, because finding time to get away to do either might be difficult otherwise. But he also flies simply for the love of being in the air and not thinking about work.
“I have to stay ahead of the airplane,” he explained. “You’re always doing what’s next. You’re getting ready to go from one controller to the next. Or you’re getting ready to land or you’re getting ready to change frequencies. You can’t be thinking of how business is doing, because you’ll miss something and that could be deadly.”
Skoda’s frequent flying companion is wife Roberta, who was his high school sweetheart and is the mother of their three grown children. She said of her husband, “Dan is serious when he flies. He doesn’t allow talking at takeoff and landing. He has control when he flies. Flying is important to him. It taught him what is and isn’t important.”
That’s a good combination for business: Someone who likes to soar while being firmly grounded.
