Everyone's W ay, Inc. Nate buys companies that are small or in financial trouble. He helps these companies turn around and develop a competitive advantage. He recently purchased a company called Everyone's Way, Inc., which sells men's clothing and accessories. Everyone's Way keeps the sewing machines for clothes manufacturing at a separate production facility so that the store location space can be reserved for display and selling. After looking over the different products available, Nate realized that the company's previous owner was not aware of the product life-cycle because the company kept items that were obviously too old and out-of-date. Also, due to high turnover, employees did not have good knowledge of the different product lines and did not know the difference between a product line and a product mix. To move the company forward, Nate thought of the following two measures: first, developing a new product to incorporate into the product mix; and second, eliminating the out-of-date products. Refer to Everyone's Way, Inc. Which of the following descriptions should Nate use to best explain the difference between the product line and product mix?

a. raw materials
b. accessory equipment
c. component parts
d. process material
e. major equipment