Management report
...o £2.7 billion, from £3.2 billion in 1999. Profit after tax had a great fluctuation, with £94.4 million, £129.6million and £3.3 million respectively in year 2001, 2000 and 1999. The distribution of current assets stayed quite similar, with a little decrease in cash and increase in inventory and trade debtor. Information above shows that the company had been challenged with declining financial position over these three years. Reasons were generally found to be both industry-wide, which includes weak economies and retail markets and company-specific factors, which included insufficient product innovation, poor presentation of products and other operation problems. In order to demonstrate and solve the problems in a better way, another world’s leading apparel company-VF Corporation has been cited to make a comparison. VF Corporation is one of the world’s largest apparel companies, which supplies many different high value brands in jeanswear, intimate apparel, knitwear and so on, such as Lee, Wrangler, Jansport, Vanity Fair and so on. The key financial information of VFC from year 1999 to 2000 is as follows: Total sales were £3.5 billion, £3.6 billion and ...