POM 651-7101
Case Study Two (Merriwell Bag Company) (Page 504-505)
SECTION ONE: SUMMARY (1 Page)
Merriwell Bag Company is a small family owned company that distributes stock bags to many small
chain stores scattered over a wide geographic area. Merriwell also has a strategy implemented of not
focusing all their attention on a single customer. Their policy is to not have a single customer account
for over 15% of sales and in fact encourages their customers to not rely solely on them and to find
alternative suppliers. This strategy has helped reduce the risk of unsalable situations and new
customers see Merriwell as more approachable and less aggressive as Merriwell’s current customer
base of over 500 customers will allow them to reach their sales goals. The demand of the product is
growing and with that the company itself has experienced growth over the past years. Presently with
the growth of the company and demand forecasting has become more difficult. The company would
like to develop a new forecasting system to more accurately forecast demand of the product month by
month. Monthly data from the previous five years has been provided to help in the task to develop a
system to be used in the current year “2012”. The Merriwell Bag Company requires an accurate
