Word: demande
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...Then fortunes turned. Demand for Crocs, which are named after a crocodile because they can be worn on both land and in the water, began to cool in early 2008. Throw in the global downturn and sales tumbled 15% to $721.5 million in 2008, leading to a loss of $185 million, following a profit of $168 million a year earlier. Its share price plummeted from a high of $74 in November 2007 to a low of just $1.05 last November. It was, says John Duerden, Crocs' chief executive, "the perfect storm." (See pictures of 23 years of Air Jordans...
...crucial first step is to lower costs, inventory and manufacturing infrastructure to levels more in line with demand. Overzealous production had left the company with millions of dollars' worth of unwanted stock by mid-2008. Some of the work was already under way: Crocs has shed 32% of jobs since 2007, shuttering factories, paring its distribution network and cutting its inventory in half over the past couple of years. That's helped nudge Crocs' stock close to $7, but for it "to move higher, [the company] ultimately needs to become profitable," says Mitch Kummetz, a senior research analyst at Wisconsin...
...while opening up new product lines. Millions still love the standard resin shoes but plenty of people despise them, too. Duerden says he receives hate mail from nonplussed members of the public; others use the website ihatecrocs.com to vent. But Crocs is confident there's a deep pool of demand for its shoes. Despite the slowdown, the firm has sold around 120 million pairs so far this year, largely to the core demographic of suburban families, across more than 100 countries...
...were raised after Obama's Cairo speech gave as much respect to Palestinian grievances and aspirations as to the Israeli perspective. Still, the Arab and Muslim worlds are waiting for Obama to deliver on those expectations. And they have been disappointed by the President's backing down from the demand that Israeli halt all settlement activity on territory conquered in 1967. That disappointment was compounded last week when Washington leaned on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to squelch efforts to get the Security Council to act on a U.N. report that accused Israel (and Hamas) of committing war crimes during...
...Security Council resolutions, backed by limited sanctions, require that Iran suspend enrichment until transparency concerns raised by the IAEA are settled. But the Western demand that Iran cede the right to enrich its own uranium is a more ambitious goal that doesn't have U.N. backing - because enrichment under safeguards to prevent weaponization is a right of all signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). When Iran insists it won't negotiate over its "nuclear rights," that's a signal that it has no intention of giving up enrichment. And the Iranians have thus far declined to discuss...