Since the mid-1990s, competition in the textile industry had increased with rapidly evolving technology, a global supply chain, and shrinking prot margins for mass-market apparel. The successful players tended to be those who could control their total production and distribution costs. In line with this, Coats tried to avoid external nancing wherever possible. Jamie's main priority was to maintain a healthy cash ow throughout the manufacturing and sales cycles. He had seen many other textile companies fail their businesses as a direct result of poor cash ow management, usually when they were left with a large quantity of slow moving or dormant product inventory at the end of each peak season. The standard recourse for these competitors was to sell these products at heavily discounted prices. Cash ow management within the apparel threads segment was directly related to the level of product inventory and was evidenced by the relatively long cash to cash cycle time in this industry