Denim Wars | The Unravelling | 6

Business Wars

Wondery

History, Business, David Brown, Management

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's 1999 and Levi's is a company in trouble. It's drowning in debt, out of fashion, and hobbled by sub-par distribution.

But while Levi's searches for a way to make a comeback, a new, fast-growing enemy is out to convince people to abandon jeans altogether.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members, you can listen to business wars at free on Amazon Music.
0:04.8	Download the app today.
0:14.1	It's October 1999, and in a corner office inside Levi's San Francisco headquarters, Phil
0:19.6	Moreno flicks through a report.
0:22.6	Just a week ago, Moreno ran Pepsi Cola North America.
0:26.0	Now the 52-year-old is the new CEO of Levi's, Paris Shooted In, to save the world's most
0:31.8	iconic pants.
0:34.1	The figures in charts in front of him are worrying.
0:37.7	Levi's is losing its youth appeal, and with it, billions of dollars in sales.
0:43.1	It's failing even on the basics, like delivering orders to retailers on time.
0:49.2	Moreno's assistant knocks on the open office door.
0:52.0	Hey, I have the Walmart buyer on the phone.
0:54.6	He wants to talk to you.
0:56.2	Moreno raises an eyebrow in surprise.
0:59.0	Levi's and Walmart have history.
1:02.0	To protect the price of its jeans, Levi's refuses to sell to discount stores in the US.
1:08.0	But in the early 90s, it did supply jeans to Walmart under the Britannia brand, and every
1:13.4	year Walmart bought millions of pairs of Britannia jeans.
1:17.5	Then, Walmart bought a chain of Canadian discount stores that stocked Levi's jeans.
1:23.3	Levi's immediately pulled its clothes from Walmart's new Canadian subsidiary.
1:28.4	Enraged, Walmart kicked Britannia out of its US stores.
1:32.7	The two companies haven't worked together since.
	...

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