A change in management structure at Marks & Spencer created a new category team, many of whom did not like the idea of sharing sales data with suppliers. The method used to generate sales data was changed, and resulted in loss of access to the flow of sales data on which the VMI system depended.
Suppliers began to outsource their production to new factories in South East Asia and Morocco to reduce costs, but this resulted in six-week replenishment cycles and loss of responsiveness. Complementary sets of clothes were sourced to different countries, and it proved hard to coordinate deliveries.