In 2002, Levi Strauss CEO Phil Marineau faced a difficult decision: whether to sell his products to Wal-Mart. Over the past five years, Levi-Strauss had lost sales and had to close its U.S. plants to move production to cheaper offshore areas. Levi's really needed to revive their brand image to recover some lost sales and was using marketing to create new advertising and product placement to broaden their target market. Levi's faced stiff competition at all levels of the price point, whether it was from high-end retailers like Diesel or Calvin Klein, vertically integrated mid-range retailers like Gap or American Eagles, and, at the bottom, branded brands of the distributor such as Wal-Mart and Target.Levi's had sold to Wal-Mart through a value brand called Brittania in the 1980s and 1990s, but that ended in 1994 due to a dispute in Canada over Levi's Orange Tab jeans. Subsequently , Brittania sales declined, and Levi's sold Brittania to VF Corp. In 2002, however, Levi's was considering offering a new value brand for Wal-Mart. However, it wasn't such an easy decision. They had to think of a way to retain existing customers in other channels and not decrease the perceived quality of the brand overall. Overall, the apparel market grew steadily from 1998 until 2001, when it fell 5.7 percent in dollar terms from the previous year. . Total jeans sales accounted for about 7 percent of the total $166 billion made in 2001 with 569 million pairs sold. Apparel industry experts predicted an interesting year for sales in 2002, saying most apparel categories would level off or even decline. Jeans were just one of several categories of pants along with casual pants and dress pants, and jeans had dominated the category until the 1990s, when sales gradually declined as consumers switched to khakis, pants cargo and other types of trousers. However, as new fabric and style innovations emerged in the jeans category in 2001, people's tastes began to shift back to jeans. In 2002, jeans sales were expected to increase by 2-3%. Another major limiting factor in the jeans market has been the decline in average price over the past decade, primarily due to the discount prices and private label brands that were so popular at mega-stores like Wal-Mart.