Threatening OMC's competitiveness was a 1980 Department of Energy proposal that boating be banned on weekends. As a result of this suggestion, public concern about gasoline shortages caused OMC's net sales to plummet to $687.4 million in 1980, from $741.2 million just one year earlier. It was not easy to maintain the company's competitive edge against the Japanese at this time, but Strang slashed budgets, reducing his work force by one-third, to save an annual pretax amount of $47 million. The reward for this effort showed at the end of fiscal 1982, when net sales reached $778 million.