Five years is a long time to carry a torch for a woman one thought one loved, but for a coat? Fashion features strange tales, perhaps, but surely not many. Let us consider what Sartorian would have us to believe that they believe.
　　The Sartorian alpaca line was initially discontinued due to supply problems. The company has a new supplier now, so clearly they assume that he is reliable. No other supplier could be found for fully five years, suggesting that alpaca wool brokers are as rare as Sartorian alpaca coats. Let us hope the gamble pays off. For one has to ask why the supply of alpaca vanished. Farmers and herdsmen rarely abandon a profitable venture. Yet Sartorian seems to think its supply problems had nothing to do with overall demand. It is true that the alpaca herders could all have gone over to the highly profitable work of growing opium for the Northern Coalition or the Taliban. It is also true that people could gradually stopped wearing alpaca and Sartorian was the last one to figure this out. Indeed has still not figured it out.
　　Sartorian also assumes that the outcry of five years ago can be converted into buyers now. This is expecting a lot of brand loyalty. This is also expecting that no synthetic substitutes have hit the market, rendering genuine alpaca obsolete. It is very well to talk of a piece of classic clothing as an article that is always in fashion. It is another thing to see sales for it actually come back and remain strong.
　　The company places great hope on the fact that its competitors do not presently offer alpaca coats. This is perhaps the most egregious assumption Sartorian is guilty of. It presumes that an appreciable demand exists for alpaca coats but that two or more intelligent and astute competitors simply ignored the market. This is possible, but only marginally credible. In fact, the case might even be worse. The memo says that no competitor even offers a “comparable product.” Presumably, this refers to synthetic alpaca substitutes. The suspicion, therefore, lingers that no one much wants anything that even looks like alpaca.
　　As everything else, the price of clothes continues to mount. Alpaca was never cheap; it will be even less so now. Yet Sartorian thinks this will augment the profitability of alpaca. It will, assuming that increased clothing costs are not mainly due to higher costs of labor, materials, transportation, and advertising. When one factor in all those elements add up together, the margin of profit could conceivably decrease considerably. A higher price in the shop does not necessarily mean a higher profit for the producer: a point any farmer could have told Sartorian.
　　This matter of inflation leads to an assumption that is being made about the customers. To assume that customers will shell out hard-earned cash for ever pricier coats assumes that they in fact have goodly amounts of disposable income. Yet recent statistics indicate that the American worker’s income, adjusted for inflation, has not increased for fifty years. In fact, it has been steadily, albeit slowly, declining for thirty years. Sartorian seems to be expecting a lot of those credit cards.
　　Last of all, is alpaca still in fashion? Sartorian assumes it never went out of vogue and perhaps it has not. Or perhaps it stands poised to come storming back onto “the scene.” As written, though, the memo is heavy on the nostalgia, light on present market awareness. If alpaca is a hot item among the ghosts of buyers past, Sartorian’s profits may similarly turn out to be phantoms as well.