Case Study | Can Levi’s Corporate Values Survive a Crisis?

This case research is a part of BoF’s particular version, Can Fashion Clean Up Its Act?

Levi Strauss & Co. reached a serious milestone in 2019: after nearly a decade-long turnaround effort, the 167-year-old, family-controlled jeansmaker went public above the anticipated value, the buying and selling ground stuffed with analysts in denim jackets.

The second marked a resurgence Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&Co.) hadn’t seen because the Nineteen Eighties. It cleaned up its enterprise, related with a brand new, younger era of buyers and courted girls again into its shops. It reduce weak partnerships with shops who promote Levi’s denims on its behalf and opened a whole lot of shops in Europe whereas beginning to deal with China.

However all this progress may evaporate. The coronavirus pandemic pressured LS&Co. to shut its shops within the US, Europe and China, and on-line gross sales aren’t making up the distinction. The corporate has needed to reduce salaries, furlough staff, cancel future attire orders and borrow cash to bolster its steadiness sheet.

LS&Co. will not be alone in going through elementary challenges. However not like a lot of its friends, the corporate has managed to weave its enterprise in with increased priorities: higher therapy for low-wage garment employees, water conservation and energy-use discount. The pandemic threatens LS&Co.’s talents to pay out dividends this 12 months, nevertheless it additionally strain assessments its mission-driven method, equivalent to efforts to supply extra cotton organically and spend money on applied sciences that require much less water.

However accountable enterprise practices imply extra to shoppers now than ever earlier than, giving LS&Co. much more of an incentive to stay with its local weather targets. Altering shopper sentiments additionally put strain on the corporate to speed up its targets or threat ceding that id to opponents. In the present day’s main world manufacturers all know the worth of advantage signalling, however few take greater than superficial steps to appease business critics.

BoF went inside LS&Co.’s disaster second and examined how its custom of values, its historical past of monetary ups and downs and its most up-to-date monitor file of creating laborious decisions responsibly may place it to climate the pandemic with out shedding its deeper id.

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