Sport Obermeyer, Ltd. Sport Obermeyer’s core business problem is that an optimal sourcing decision needs to be made. By the way that things are currently run, the company’s lead-time for each product line is 2 years. The design process begins in January and ends when products are delivered and stocked in Denver stores in September almost two years later. The company is dealing with a few key issues that need to be addressed. First, it operates a complex supply chain with thousands of SKUs as shown in Exhibit 2 of the case. Components like zippers, snaps, fabric, or thread are sourced from 10 different countries. Another issue is that company faces is that it incurs a revenue loss every season when not enough of its most popular products sell out and it can no longer replenish its retailers. Finally, the company currently manufactures an excess of sample products. Obermeyer incurs another large expense by creating samples for each one of the company’s products once their design and prototyping has been finalized. First thing for Sport Obermeyer to do is to cut down its number of suppliers. By consolidating the supply chain, they would have more time to complete the manufacturing process. Another potential result from this is that the total cost of materials for parkas could decrease dramatically. Less sources would mean less lead times, less costs, and less minimum orders. Next, Sport Obermeyer should implement Electronic Data Interchange with its suppliers. With this new EDI system, the company could begin to track sales data as early as September when the first products are being purchased. Early trends in demand can be tracked much more easily and would allow it to prepare for better restocking the retailers. Once Wally has this information, he can request for popular products in high demand to be produced in Hong Kong, which can put together a production run of a particular item with no issues. Hong Kong has a minimum order quantity of 600 units but because the popular product shows high demand trends, we will most likely be asking for more than