We were presented a problem in class by the guest speaker Joel Primus, who was the founder of NAKED Underwear.

The manufacturing operations had too much inventory and the inventory wasn’t fitting properly. This would potentially affect the turnover ratio of the company, as personal undergarments are quite case sensitive and sales may be negatively affected. This issue was the exact opposite of what Lululemon had and I had encountered on Kyle Yoshida’s blog which addressed the issue as a “supply chain issue”. I personally do not see excess inventory as an issue because all that needs to be done now, is the allocation of inventory via operations and marketing.

Other cases include Zara, which competes with the swiftness of delivery. This makes it so that Zara does not need to get direct feedback from its consumers. It can be noted that one of Lady Gaga’s outfit styles were imitated by Zara and resulted in everyone in the crowd looking like Gaga in the concert. For DELL, it has a huge advantage over its competitors such as HP because it can get primary information (i.e. communicate and get feedback directly from its consumers) which drastically improves a company’s turnover ratio.