Jeans bottom out, but he tightens up.

• Position: Mackey McDonald, president and chief executive officer of Wrangler Co.

In the fiercely competitive business of selling blue jeans, Mackey McDonald is battle-toughened. He's had plenty of combat experience.

McDonald, 44, president and chief executive of Greensboro-based Wrangler Co., was a pilot in the Army's I st Air Cavalry in Vietnam. "In military training, we spent three months learning to fly a plane and another eight months in emergency procedures in how to recover from bad situations," he recalls.

The training paid off then - he survived losing an engine and later being shot down - and it's paying off now. "Since then," he says, "I've applied some of that military training to business situations."

McDonald, who oversees some 12,000 employees in six Southern states and two Latin American countries, was recently given additional responsibilities by Wrangler's parent company, Wyomissing, Pa.based VF Corp. It's hoping he can use his battle smarts to bolster its troubled kids-clothing manufacturer, Health-tex Inc., and sportswear-maker JanSport Inc.

McDonald, a Georgia native who spent nine years working in Hanes Corp.'s knitwear division in Winston-Salem, has faced plenty of difficulties in his five years as Wrangler's CEO. As baby boomers age and their bottoms broaden...