Sport Obremeyer Case

Sport Obermeyer is a Skiwear Company, established in 1947 by Klaus Obermeyer in Aspen, Colorado. The management: His management approaches: took more intuitive style & was informed by his extensive industry experience. Klaus son Wally, MBA, is the company’s vice president. His management approaches: relied on formal data gathering and analytical techniques. Suppliers: Obersport plays a huge role in the production, it gathers and sources the supplies, fabrics and components for Sport Obermeyer production. Sport Obermeyer's orders represented about 80% of Alpine's annual production volume. Target customers: The company is targeting middle-class / high-class consumer segments. Sport Obermeyer developed by time to be a strong competitor in the U.S. skiwear market. The company holds a 45% share of the children's skiwear market &11% share of the adult skiwear market. *Comp*etitors: Columbia Sportswear is a huge competitor for Obermeyer. *The problems*: It is facing a problem in distributing the demand on its main suppliers in the Far East; either plants in China or Hong Kong. Forecasting next season’s demand: Demand for each product cannot be determined by managers (each one of them gave a different forecast result). Even the production for each style takes more than two years, so the production cycle has a very long lead time which makes it hard for them to adapt with the market designs and changes since they can’t predict what product will be the best seller in two years and how much quantity they should produce. Suggested solutions: Because Wally found that the standard deviation of demand was approximately twice the standard deviation of the committee’s forecast of that style, we suggest adding the highest and lowest range to that table (by adding 2* standard deviation to the mean) and