Bergen wanted in. He knew that Marineau's plan to change the line according to what customers wanted would demand big things. More slicing and dicing of customer data and investments in data warehouse technology. He knew that selling to the mass market would require supply chain improvements. He understood that globalization demanded standardized enterprise systems. What more could a CIO want?

After settling into his new job in 2000, he began working to make Levi's technology fit for what the retail world calls the "mass channel," big discount stores where 31 percent of all jeans in the country are now sold. Levi's wanted to play in that channel, and when Bergen arrived, the company was in tentative discussions with Kmart, Target and Wal-Mart, among others. But the water in the channel flowed swiftly; Bergen knew that without a technology overhaul, Levi's would surely drown. He was most concerned that the company's national distribution strategy didn't suit the way Wal-Mart did business. Levi's had a poor on-time delivery record too—the result of manufacturing and logistics problems born when it shuttered company-owned factories in the United States during the late 1990s and transitioned largely to overseas manufacturing.

Making Levi's Wal-Mart Ready

But all of this change took time.

When Levi's and Wal-Mart first sat down to talk, Levi's was not—as Gregg Hammann, Levi's U.S. chief customer officer, recalls—up to the demands that Wal-Mart placed on its 30,000 suppliers.

Gregg Hammann, Levi's U.S. chief customer officer, says recent IT improvements have enabled the apparel maker to deliver products on time, 95 percent of the time. Before CIO David Bergen arrived, the rate was 65 percent. "Our supply chain could not deliver the services Wal-Mart expected," says Bergen, who spent time at Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters during "exploratory meetings" before a deal was signed. Being a supplier to Wal-Mart demands a certain level of performance—and cost control. Wal-Mart drives you to work with your supply chain to put the same requirements on your suppliers that Wal-Mart puts on you. If you can't make your supply chain work, you won't benefit from being a supplier. Period.