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Exchange rates have
fluctuated, and some of our competitors may have cut corners since this
appeared in our July 1988 catalog, on the occasion of our 25th Anniversary
of business, 1963-1988. But we still travel the world to follow our commitment
to bring you the highest quality at the best possible price. (Principle
6 of our Principles
of Doing Business.) And there are even more people in Dodgeville,
Wisconsin dedicated to assuring our Quality, and your long-term satisfaction
with our products. Quality in the apparel business,
we learned early in our life, is an ephemeral thing.
Our products, unlike those which
are cast and machined or molded, are made mostly by hand. Making clothing
remains essentially an art form.
Raw material, for the most
part, grows in a field or on the backs and bellies of sheep, and no two
of anything are the same.
An electric knife cuts the
fabric, but a human hand usually guides the knife. Sewing machine operators
are also very human, and like each of us, they have good days and bad
days. The judgement and skill of individual people, more than anything
else, determines the quality of apparel.
To get a handle on it, a Quality
Assurance Department began to grow at Lands' End. Today, with 59 people,
it is one of the largest departments in the company.
Our people have an edge over
our multiple store competition: everything we buy comes through one set
of doors in our only location, Dodgeville, Wisconsin. Our specialists
see it all and test each lot. If it fails the lot test, each individual
piece is examined one by one.
The front lines and trenches
of quality, though, are at plants where the manufacturing takes place.
We have taken extraordinary measures, in every part of the world, to have
our own people inspect goods before they are shipped to Dodgeville.
And so our drill to get it
right before it gets to us goes on. We make progress, but still don't
achieve perfection because of the imperfect nature of the beast. Things
do occasionally get out to you that shouldn't, which is why we back everything
with one unqualified guarantee: Guaranteed.
Period.®
A guarantee that makes everyone
try harder to get it right the first time, then attend to the problem
(not the terms of the guarantee) if something goes wrong.
We have learned to cherish
those suppliers who share our obsession for quality, wherever they call
home. Most of them, more than 250, are located in the United States. Some
are located in the British Isles, and still others on the Pacific Rim.
There is a lot of pressure
on our overseas sources today, the result of the current exchange rate.
In 1985, the British Pound hit a low of $.09. When that happened Lands'
End cut all prices of British goods, passing along the exchange rate windfall
to our customers. English Shetland Sweaters that season were $.50.
Today the Pound is $.90, a 73% increase, and our English Shetlands
will be $.50, a 46% increase.
I will make some promises to
you:
- We will always have fair
pricing at Lands' End, whether costs are up or down.
- We will not give up quality
suppliers for the sake of lower price.
- We will never, ever take
quality out of a product as a means of holding price.
In this issue, you will see price
increases on merchandise from our overseas manufacturers. But we have kept
prices as tight as we can, below the increases passed along by companies
whose policy is high mark-ups. And, when and if the exchange rate turns
around we will reduce prices just as we did in the past.
Always, we will try to provide
you with choices that represent the best value possible.
Gary Comer, Founder
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