This disguised case was prepared by Rebecca Goldberg (MBA ’03), Case Writer; Tim Kraft, Assistant Professor of Business Administration; and Elliott
Weiss, Oliver Wight Professor of Business Administration. It was written as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate effective or ineffective
handling of an administrative situation. All figures are disguised. Copyright 2014 by the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation,
Charlottesville, VA. All rights reserved. To order copies, send an e-mail to [email protected]. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of
the Darden School Foundation.
Supply Chain Management at Beautiful Bags
It was June 2014. Vince Sheehy, senior director of merchandise management at Beautiful Bags (BB), was
about to place a large order for the upcoming winter season. In four months, he would need to deliver the
merchandise ordered now to BB stores and more than 3,000 retail partners. His design team had spent the past
several months touring fashion shows throughout the world, and after a significant testing and vetting process,
it had settled on the colors, patterns, and items it thought would resonate most highly with BB customers. Now
Sheehy had to make a decision regarding how many pieces he should order of each SKU.1
Sheehy had two primary locations to choose from for manufacturing finished products: BB’s six partner
suppliers in China, and a domestic production facility located just 20 minutes down the road from BB’s
distribution center. Sheehy used historical sales figures to estimate demand for each of BB’s nearly 6,000 SKUs,
but given the vagaries of the fashion industry, accurately predicting customer demand was notoriously difficult.
Merchandise sourced from China was less expensive, but the large order quantities and four-month lead times
for receiving an order increased BB’s risk exposure in a trend-intensive business.
The Company
BB made quilted cotton bags in bright, pretty patterns.2 The company was founded in 1982 in King of
Prussia, Pennsylvania, by two friends, Millie Patrick and Jean Marcus. Operations first began in Marcus’s
basement, aided by $500 worth of cloth, thread, and sewing machines. A key to BB’s success was its use of
proprietary patterns. BB cycled through four new patterns a year. From these four patterns, nearly 100 different
styles of handbags, wallets, and luggage pieces were created each year.
Historically, BB had focused on selling wholesale quantities to its partner retailers. Since 2010, the company
had expanded into other channels by launching its 87 BB corporate stores (where full-price merchandise was
sold), 13 BB outlets (where discounted merchandise was sold), and an e-commerce website.3 Interestingly,
according to data collected by the company, only 7% to 10% of BB customers shopped in more than one of
these channels. In other words, there was very little intersection between shoppers who first saw a full-price
item in a flagship store and then took the time to shop for that same item at a discount.
1 SKU = stock keeping unit.
2 Below is a reference for the terms used to describe BB’s merchandise:
Style: A type of bag, wallet, or luggage—similar to a vehicle model.
Pattern: A full-color design that is printed on fabric.
Product: A style in a particular pattern (the SKU).
3 In 2010, BB became a publicly traded company.
Page 2 UVA-OM-1522
As the company grew, the number of different styles and patterns also expanded—and the process for
ordering and managing inventory became far more complex. In 2014, BB was considering changes to its
inventory management practices that it hoped would lead to greater flexibility, reduced costs, and a potential
increase in working capital that could be directed toward growth projects such as BB’s channel expansion.
The Thomas Jefferson Lane Facility
In 2009, BB built a domestic production facility to support manufacturing of BB bags and other sewn
products, such as tablet sleeves, eyeglass cases, placemats, and napkins. The Thomas Jefferson Lane facility
(TJL) provided the company a great deal of flexibility, which was needed because BB maintained so many
different SKUs and because fashion sales were difficult to predict.4 The facility also allowed BB to maintain a
high degree of customer service. In a very short time period, TJL could offset any inventory shortages that
might be occurring in one of BB’s distribution channels. Despite an average cost per bag that was nearly double
the cost of the same bag made in China, TJL had proved invaluable as a way to meet shortages on top sellers
and keep BB’s retail partners and customers happy each season.
TJL used Lean manufacturing practices and a combination of automation and skilled labor. The standard
production process for a bag was as follows. First, quilting machines would sandwich a roll of foam between
two sheets of cotton fabric—the top layer, which would become the outside of the bag, and the bottom layer,
which would become the inside lining of the bag. A single machine could quilt the three layers of a bag together
in a classic diamond pattern at a rate of 360 yards per hour. The finished rolls of quilted fabric would then be
moved to a spreader, which would roll out lengths of quilt and cut them to a specific size. The cut sheets were
stacked by hand and became a kit, or batch. The number of bags in the kit depended on the style of bag and
the number of quilted sheets. For instance, a stack of 20 sheets of quilt could make a kit of 100 small bags or
10 duffel bags.
The kit was then passed through a cutting machine, which compressed the stack of quilted sheets and cut
a preset pattern of shapes from the kit. The kits were placed on movable, wheeled racks and combined with
purchased parts such as zippers, snaps, and buckles, along with component parts manufactured in the facility
such as basting and trim. The wheeled racks then were moved through several departments that partially
assembled the kits before arriving at the finishing stations, where all the parts were put together into finished
bags. In 2014, the facility had experimented with a few production cells wherein kits were fully assembled one
at a time by workers who stood rather than sat.
The Buying Decision
Under the current sourcing policy, a broad assortment of SKUs was ordered four times per year. Each
season (i.e., a quarter that corresponded to a fashion season), a purchase order (PO) was issued to BB’s Chinese
suppliers for every type of product BB planned to carry that season. The lead time for receiving finished goods
from the Chinese suppliers after placing the order was 120 days. The order quantities for each item were based
on historical sales figures. Shortages and overages were common. Reorders of in-season products, sourced from
TJL, were completed as part of in-season product management.
BB’s best margins were earned on new product sold at retail price through the company’s own channels—
the website or corporate stores. BB made lower margins on new product sold wholesale to its retail partners.
As excess inventory became dated, BB had several options for recouping some portion of its inventory
4 BB originally attempted to work with contract manufacturers, but due to its large assortment and changing demands, the cost was too high.
Page 3 UVA-OM-1522
investment. BB’s first choice for selling more dated product was to sell it at a discount through its outlet stores.
Items not sold in the current season, therefore, might remain on the web for an extended period of time and
also be available in the factory outlet, assuming there was some velocity to the sales. The second choice for
selling more dated inventory was through third-party liquidators such as T.J. Maxx and Marshalls. If the velocity,
or rate of sale, slowed for a particular SKU, it would be moved to an annual outlet sale at the King of Prussia
Convention Center (where many items had been in inventory for up to a year).
The numerous SKUs, patterns, and retail
channels that sold BB products made it
challenging to order inventory four months in
advance. Sheehy wanted to implement three
changes to simplify the inventory management
process. First, he advocated for segmentation of
BB’s product lines into different categories. BB
leadership had been moving toward a model
that Sheehy called the “retail pyramid,” which
categorized the SKUs that BB might carry at any
given time into three strata: “blue jeans,”
“what’s next,” and “high fashion” (Figure 1).
Blue-jean products were tried-and-true BB
styles that had steady demand—flagship sellers
and consistent basics such as the BB bag, the
hipster, and the tote. These products were here
to stay, and they composed the base of the
pyramid. Orders in excess of demand for these
products would most likely be sold during the
next quarter.
