The following appeared in a memo from the new vice president of Sartorian, a company that manufactures men's clothing. "Five years ago, at a time when we had difficulty obtaining reliable supplies of high-quality wool fabric, we discontinued production of our popular alpaca overcoat. Now that we have a new fabric supplier, we should resume production. Given the outcry from our customers when we discontinued this product and the fact that none of our competitors offers a comparable product, we can expect pent-up consumer demand for our alpaca coats. Due to this demand and the overall increase in clothing prices, we can predict that Sartorian's alpaca overcoats will be more profitable than ever before." Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
In the argument above, the author claims that Sarorian's alpaca overcoats will be more profitable than ever before. Also he has provided several reasons for this claim. However, before we could come to a conclusion, the author should answer several questions as below.
First of all, will the customers actually buy our overcoat even though there is outcry from our customers? Or to say, is there truly demands for this kind of cloth? The outcry five years ago cannot indicate that people today are still favor the overcoat today. Because chances are that there are more kinds of fashion cloth today and people changes there view of clothing by time. Furthermore, Since the author asserted that none of our competitors offer a comparable product, we may think of this phenomenon as the indication of no interets among people for this kind of cloth at all. As a result, the claim about the demand among people is open to doubt.
Granted that people are still desire for alpaca overcoat, we should ask will the Sartorian gains more profits by producing alpaca overcoats? It is true that a new supplier could offer us certain fabric for the seemingly popular overcoat. However, we are not informed of the costs of the new fabric. Thus the income might be less than the money we paid for these new fabric. Also, the profits of a product depends on several factors like the policies, the cost of electric and payment of employee. Thus the claim Satorian's alpaca overcoats will be more profitable is open to doubt.
Additionally, is there any other opposite effects to the company to produce this kind of costume? Seeing that the author has not offer any information about the statement of the company, we may assume that the Sartorian may be dangerous and on the edge of breakup thus attentions should be focus on recovery of the company. But what detract a company's focus is the production of a new kind like alpaca overcoat. On the other hand, the company migh have set up a fame for high quality of T-shirt, for example. Then the potential risks of producing alpaca overcoat migh destroy the whole reputation of Satorian. In one word, the president should take into careful consideration the potential opposite influence before the decision to produce alpaca overcoat.
To sum, before the new vice president could persuade us of his suggestions, several questions should be answered like will customers actually buy our overcoat and will Satorian gain more profits from alpaca overcoat? Even these questions are answered with "yes", the president should consider more about the potential negative influence.
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