Case-2: Western Pants

Western Pants, Inc. s one of Americas oldest clothing firms. Founded in the mid-nineteenth century, the firm successfully weathered lean years and the Great Depression largely as the result of the market durability of its dominant, and at times only, product-blue denim jeans. Until 1950, the firm had never seriously marketed other products or even additional types of trousers. A significant change in marketin strategy in the 1950s altered that course, which Westerns management had revered for 100 years. Aggressive new managers decided at that time that Westerns well-established name could and should be used to market other lines of pants. Consumers welcomed initial offerings in a mens casual trouser. The company produced different patterns of this basic style and stylish, tailored variations of the same casual motif almost yearly.

Alert managerial planning in the early 1960s enabled Western to become the first pants manufacturer to establish itself in the revolutionary wash and wear field. Further refinement of this process broadened the weave and fabric types that could be tailored into fashionable trousers and still survive enough machine wash and dry cycles to satisfy Westerns rigid quality-control standards.

With the advent of mod clothing and the generally casual yet stylish garb that became acceptable attire at semiformal affairs, pants became fashion attire, rather than the mere clothing staples they had been in years past. Western quickly gained a foothold in the bell-bottom and flare market, and from there grew with the leg look to its present position as the free worlds largest clothing manufacturer.

Today Western, in addition to its still remarkably popular blue denim jeans, offers a complete line of casual trousers, an extensive array of dress and fashion jeans for both men and boys, and a complete line of pants for women. Last year the firm sold approximately 70 million pairs of pants.

Production:

For the last twenty years, Western Pants has been in a somewhat unusual and enviable market position. In each of those years, it has sold virtually all its production and often had to begin rationing its clothing to established customers or refusing orders from new customers as early as six months prior to the close of the production year. Whereas most business ventures face limited demand and, in the long run, excess production, Western, whose sales have doubled each five years during that twenty year period, has had to face excess and growing demand with limited although rapidly growing production capacity.

The firm has established 33 plants in its 150-year history. These production units vary somewhat in output capacity, but the average is roughly 20,000 pairs of trousers per week. With the exception of two or three plants that usually produce only blue denim jeans during the entire production year, Westerns plants produce various styles of pants for all of Westerns departments (see Western Pants Exhibit 1).