=+would like us to be more flexible in changing our volumes and delivery schedules. I admit that we could be more flexible within the season. Partly, we can’t do this because we have to buy in cloth at the beginning of the season based on the forecast volumes from our customers. Even if we could change our production schedules, we could not get extra deliveries of cloth. We only deal with high-quality and innovative cloth manufacturers who are very large compared to us, so we do not represent much business for them.” A typical cloth supplier said: “We compete primarily on quality and innovation.

Designing cloth is as much of a fashion business as designing the clothes into which it is made. Our cloth goes to tens of thousands of customers around the world. These vary considerably in their requirements, but presumably all of them value our quality and innovation.”