One of the best business speakers I have ever heard present is Mike McBreen, formerly of Nike and now with Wolverine World Wide based in Rockford, Michigan.  I was fortunate to be invited to a lunch on campus where Mike spoke to us about himself and his work at Nike, and we could ask him questions. A very humble man you could not help but like and respect. Mike also spoke at our winter undergraduate Orfalea College of Business graduation ceremony and did a great job.

One of his points during that lunch that resonated with me and still sticks in my mind … successful corporate strategy, at least in his industry, is becoming more and more tied to the supply chain and how quickly and efficiently goods can be moved from creation to the customer.

As one of his examples, he indicated that the retail “shelf life” of a T-shirt is/was about 33 days. Yet, it takes 28 days just to ship a shirt from a port in China to Nike’s intake facility on the US East Coast. Thus, if consumer taste takes a big swing while the ship carrying your T-shirt is going through the Panama Canal, you are not in a terribly enviable position. Future victory, then, at least for those in the T-shirt or other textile sales business, may hinge more and more on who can cut that 28 days down to, for example, 10 days — and Mike talked about how he is seeing some T-shirt production starting to move back to the US from abroad.

If so, does this make one of the books that a number of you read to help prepare you for the China trip, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, outdated? Just a thought.

Man, the world of business changes at light speed and that is one of the things I love about it. I hope you do too. No day is the same or boring in business.

For more information on the supply chain issue, check out MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics web site, where the techies there go nuts over this supply chain stuff.

This issue also relates to the Port (or a similar one) we may possibly visit in China (depends on our ultimate travel plan and details).

Professor Carr March 13, 2008 addendum: See this related post I just made, Gone Baby, Gone … Even From Mexico.