In addition, “equity loss in joint ventures” has increased in negative figures for four consecutive years from 2001. This suggests that Krispy Kreme Doughnuts’ developments in other business areas are not successful and that lack of success has impacted the company’s income. Observing the balance sheets, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts’ total assets look good in general from the Jan. 2000 filing through the Feb. 2004 filing, however there are some concerning later-year shifts. In particular, cash reserves between the Feb. 2003 and Feb. 2004 filings have dropped considerably; this might indicate some reason for concern regarding future solvency. Krispy Kreme Doughnuts’ ‘assets held for sale’ is up almost $37 million in the Feb. 2004 filing.
The remaining outlets are still in the JBC service area (non-DFW). Alexander Barrett, President of Jones Blair Company, stated, “Our experience to date shows that in our DFW outlets, the effect of multiple lines has been to cause a decline in gallonage volume. The non-DFW outlets, by comparison, have grown in gallonage volume. When you combine the two, you have stable gallonage volume.” Advertising: JBC only spends 3% of their net sales on advertising and sales promotion efforts. Fifty five percent of advertising and sales promotion dollars are allocated to cooperative advertising programs with retail accounts.
The managers want to expand the national market shares through this way to increase profits. Even when Best Buy began to use a new sales model in 1990, Circuit City still carried on the aggressive expansion program to open the market. Although resulted in too many stores in different places and the national market share has increased, however, its share in served markets had dropped in 1990. From this situation, it shows the expansion strategy did not work any more, because the market environment changed and competitors became stronger. Under the high competitive and fast-evolving electronic industry, no change means fall behind.
First problem we encountered were the current and quick ratios were unusually high due to the amount of cash, receivables and short term investments that Krispy Kreme held. This is an indication that the company was not investing in other projects and remained conservative with regards to the treatment of current assets from 2001 to 2004. The net sales, receivables and inventory turnover were much lower compared to the industry, but ultimately the profit margin and return on equity remained consistent which we considered questionable. The leverage ratios were lower than the industry; the company used debt to make payments and took a line of credit. Although cash reserves were high and debt was very low, the cash ratio was lower
A major increase in sales between 2000 and 2006 has made Hotel Chocolat’s competitors eager to find the key to the company’s success, leaving the founders to face the challenge of how to protect the business from plagiarism. Trademarking its name and all its products, although a widely-used defence mechanism, is not a satisfying solution here; with 30% of its products replaced by another annually in order to meet the demands of its customers and continuous product range expansions, it would become a burden, adding administrative costs and bureaucracy. Now a luxury provider, the company started in 1980s supplying mints, before moving to chocolate and, finally, rebranding in 2003 as Hotel Chocolat. With own cocoa plantation, 11 retail shops in popular tourist locations, a call centre and an online store, Hotel Chocolat is now reaching customers in the UK, USA and in Europe, with aspirations to become one of the world’s top chocolate brands. Despite these developments, Hotel Chocolat is not interested in offering department store concessions or own-label goods and wants to keep the number of its high street shops to the minimum in order to retain its premium brand image and uniqueness as well as keeping full control over staff training and storing conditions of its products.
Case Brief Peak Garage Door, Inc. Peak Garage Door had just finished its company planning process and wanted to increase its sales by 36 percent with a sales goal of $12.5 million for 2004. With such a large increase there was concern that the current distribution approach would not be sufficient to increase sales by the amount necessary. Richard Hawly, Director of Sales and Marketing, has been tasked with devising the best distribution strategy that would be consistent with achieving the 2004 sales goal. In devising the best distribution strategy several factors need to be considered.
Date: October 28, 2013 RE: CTM Exercise Four - Boston Beer ____________________________________________________________________________ I. Issue/Problem: Boston Beer was a very low budget start-up with expertise in only a specific area of overall 3 billion dollar beer industry. It competed against big players with vast amount of resources who produced variety of beers at competitive prices. A. Boston Beer was designing a company that to make a profit, had to sell beer at a 15% mark-up to other companies. 1. Beer in USA is almost a drink consumed regularly, hence consumers wouldn’t pay premium price very often just for the sake of better quality and taste.
They also employed 168,000 employees which was almost 1% of the total U.S. labor force. Decades later, USS’s investment and technology strategies started becoming less aggressive. Their U.S. market share declined and was only around 20% at the beginning of 1980. The economic recession hit in early 1980’s. Manufacturing costs for USS were high due to their lack of investments in new technologies.
Laura Ashley is a global clothing and furnishings retailer based in the United Kingdom. They had grown at a very fast rate from operating 231 retail stores in 1986 to 481 stores in 1990. Unfortunately, its profits were not increasing as expected due to the inefficiency of its logistics management. Overall, it could be considered that the company grew too fast and without the infrastructure to support the growth. Information technology investment was also considered to lag behind the level that was required to initially support the growth and also to support the company in their ongoing global operations.
This compensation model was incongruent with the company’s business objective to increase its market share by launching advanced new products faster than any other competitors. QUESTION 2 We see all six new processes were