Gap Inc. executives said they had to resort to heavy discounting to move unsold clothes that had piled up at stores, moves that weighed on profit in the first quarter and could carry over into the current period.
“If you have too much inventory or the wrong inventory, holding on to it does not make it better,” Chief Executive Art Peck said on a conference call Thursday. “And so we were very decisive on that and took those actions. It wasn’t without pain, but we believe it was absolutely the right thing to do to continue to...