United States Of America : Will Levi Strauss Wear As Well As Its Blue Jeans?

Levi Strauss & Co celebrated its 150th birthday on Thursday with a party amid questions about whether it would continue to endure as well its legendary blue jeans.

Chairman Bob Haas captured the company's stunning run when he recalled the state of Levi Strauss at its 100th birthday in 1953, when it had little distribution east of the Mississippi River and none overseas.

"I'm very optimistic we're in the process of stabilizing the business," Haas told employees at its San Francisco headquarters. "We're beginning a great turnaround."

But Chief Executive Phil Marineau cautioned, "We're operating in a 99-cent Big Mac world."

Though Levi's jeans are sold all over the world, worn by teenagers, presidents and rock stars, Marineau said the company is struggling to meet competition from cheaper and more numerous brands.

"There's very little growth today, and all sorts of new competitors trying to capture a sliver of our market share," Marineau said. "The last thing the world needs is another apparel brand."

Yet introducing a new brand is exactly the strategy Levi Strauss finds itself pursuing as it seeks to make up for years of resting on its laurels that left it caught off guard by recent fashion trends like tummy-hugging low riders.

Superlow jeans:
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Levi Strauss last year rolled out a new brand of "SuperLow" jeans, and in July it will have a cheaper jeans line on sale at Wal-Mart Stores Inc.. The less expensive jeans are a response to the rise of discount clothing stores that have made the company's $29-a-pair jeans seem terribly expensive.

"We have to sell where people shop," said Marineau. Levi Strauss has endured some rough patches in the past. In

1986, it responded to a slump by introducing the Dockers brand of khaki pants for men and women. That launch not only set off 10 years of growth, but, the company claims, also revolutionized office fashion by bridging the gap between jeans and suits, and ushering in the world of "business casual."

For all the bumps it has encountered so far, its 150-year life span makes Levi Strauss an enigma in the apparel world, where fads often trounce tradition.

The company's Dockers-fueled growth spurt ran out of steam in 1996, when the company's sales peaked at $7.1 billion. Last year, Levi's sales drifted to $4.1 billion, and the company soon found that fashion was no longer the only front on which it was fighting.

When two former executives recently sued the company, charging it falsely inflated its income, Levi Strauss joined a long list of U.S. companies accused of questionable accounting practices. The privately held company has vehemently denied the charges.

"We're trying not to throw the baby out with the bath water," Marineau said, explaining why the company continues to make its traditional orange-stitched, red-tabbed jeans that come, as they always have, with the waist size printed on a leather patch by the waist line, even as it mimics newer fads.

"They are our authentic original product," he said. "If you don't want people to know your waist size, you can cross it out with a magic marker."