The Mass Market Changes Everything

Levi's decision last November to begin doing business with Wal-Mart changed CIO Bergen's life.

Like every supplier stocking the $245 billion retailer's endless shelves, Bergen had to rethink his supply chain—every detail of how Levi's jeans, jackets and shirts would get from factories to new regional warehouses to Wal-Mart's 3,422 U.S. stores when they are needed, not before and certainly not after. That's a mighty leap from the demands placed on Levi's by smaller department store chains such as Macy's (243 stores), or even J.C. Penney (1,049 stores).

Complicating this challenge was the fact that Bergen would be going live with a completely upgraded supply chain system during the back-to-school rush, the worst time for a retailer to roll out a new technology.

But 47-year-old Bergen says he signed on at Levi's in November 2000 for precisely these kinds of challenges. He's sought them out all through his career. In 1981, he helped install The Gap's first point-of-sale system, which tracked both sales and inventory. In 1985, he moved to clothing maker Esprit de Corps, where he managed all IT development before heading back to The Gap to help improve production planning.

When Levi's new President and CEO Philip A. Marineau called in 2000, Bergen was at Carstation.com, a startup with a business model he questioned. He was itching to return to the apparel business. "One of the things that excited me was the changes Levi's was going through," says Bergen, who bears a slight resemblance to the actor Tim Allen and, like most employees milling around Levi's Plaza, dresses in the company's casual clothes. Marineau came to Levi's from PepsiCo in 1999, a year after helping the eternal number-two beverage maker surpass Coke in sales. Shortly after his arrival, he planned a turnaround that would entail making clothes that better met demands of stores and customers—selling to the mass market and tightening operations around the world.