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| Company | Liz Claiborne |
| Submitted by | ksiu1 |
| Member Rating | 92.97 |
| Submitted on | 4/2/2011 |
| Stock Price at Recommendation | $5.30 |
| Star Rating (out of 5) | ** |
| Headquarters | New York City |
| Industry | Apparel |
| Market Cap | $538 million |
| Competitors | Cherokee Aeropostale Urban Outfitters |
Sources: Capital IQ (a division of Standard & Poor's), Yahoo! Finance, and Motley Fool CAPS.
This week's pitch:
Keeping my focus within my sphere of knowledge. I think Liz will continue to struggle as it's caught between two conflicting forces. First is its agent agreement with Li & Fung which is a public company listed in Hong Kong. Li and Fung's primary source of manufacturing is Asia. As inflation on that continent increase, so will costs and Li & Fung isn't going to be the one taking the hit on that. They're simply going to tell Liz "Here's the price" and Liz will be paying a % of it to Li & Fung. And it's not like Liz can shop around since according to their annual report they [are] pretty locked in. Further conflict of interest is that Li&Fung owns brands that they sell to dept stores themselves. It's in their best interest to use their best suppliers and lock up the most affordable raw material prices for their own brands.
If that wasn't bad enough Liz also has to contend with their retail partners J.C. Penney [
Finally they're operating from a position of weakness when their fundamental focus has to be on managing their brands and merchandising. Their exec's are busy trying to manage cash flow and are probably distracted. It's a vicious little cycle. Soon they'll be selling brands to raise money.
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