Athlete's Warehouse: A SWOT Analysis Introduction: Athlete's Warehouse is a leading company for sports shoes and clothing serving the Grand Falls market. Howse, et al. (1992). It is guided by a case study analysis to carry out a SWOT analysis and discern its internal strengths and weaknesses relative to its external opportunities and threats. Strengths: Developed Supplier Relationships: During his tenure at the University of Ottawa, one of the founders, Colin Power, forged relationships with suppliers. This gives Athlete's Warehouse an advantage in sourcing quality products for their store. Knowledgeable Staff: Colin and Ed Power possess athletic expertise and can provide expert advice to customers. This expertise can enhance the customer experience and build trust in the store. Unique …show more content…
Lack of Full-Time Management: The closure of the previous store in Comer Brook was primarily due to Colin's unavailability for management. Cash Flow Issues: The Fitness Factory, a business previously operated by Colin, experienced cash flow problems. This indicates a potential weakness in Colin's understanding of managing cash flow effectively, which could challenge Athlete's Warehouse. Opportunities: Growing Market: The case study indicates positive economic conditions in Grand Falls, with a high average family income and a large retail trading area. This suggests a growing market potential for sports shoes and clothing in the area. Limited Competition: While there are sporting goods stores and other clothing and shoe stores in Grand Falls, Athlete's Warehouse can position itself as a specialized store focusing on quality products and knowledgeable staff. Expand Customer Base: Athlete’s Warehouse can use its location to attract the store as the only service center in a retail trading area with a primary customer base of no fewer than 50,000
The competitive analysis sought to establish Kendra Scott’s competitive rivalry, buyer power, supplier power, threat of new entrants, and threat of substitutes. Kendra Scott has various major competitors, but it has preserved its leadership in the jewelry industry by maintaining a brand that is associated with superior and consistent customer experience, authenticity, superior core values, and flexibility in responding to changing tastes. The consumers have weak bargaining power largely due to the emotional attachment they have for particular jewelry brands. Besides, they do not rely on market forces and pricing levels to make purchasing decisions. The jewelry company and its main competitors depend on a few suppliers for their raw materials
Associated Wholesale Grocers (AWG) came into being more than eight decades ago when several independent retailers decided that the power of a cooperative far outweighed the influence of any one individual retail grocer. AWG provides distributor services to independent grocers in over 30 states with nine distribution centers throughout the South and Southeast regions of the country. In addition to their wholesale foods department, AWG offers a myriad of services from new store design, construction, marketing, product placement and “world class” logistical consultation (cite 11). AWG faces many of the same logistical challenges that other similar wholesalers face to include rising fuel costs, inclement weather, stringent timelines and an ever evolving need for stringent quality. One method to exploit a business’s positive and negative attributes is through the use of a Strength-Weakness-Opportunity-Threat analysis, or SWOT analysis (Cite 11). If used correctly, the analysis results can give insight into potential market areas of expansion and expose vulnerabilities to senior leadership so that they can be mitigated. AWG looks at its Supply Chain Management (SCM) as an integral part of its core business offering multiple services such as logistics to new co-op members. The team members of AWG are positioning themselves for sustainable success, now and in the future.
“The Miles and Snow’s typology is based on the idea that managers seek to formulate strategies that will be congruent with the external environment” (64). There are four types of strategies that can be established under this typology that is, the prospector, the defender, the analyzer and the reactor. While prospector is innovative and risky, the defender is conservative and concerned with stability. I have mentioned above that HBC is now able to compete with premium brands retailer due to an acquisition of Saks Fifth Avenue, and yet they are not utilizing low-cost leadership as their main competitive strategy. Nonetheless, Daft and Armstrong showcases a perfect example of the defender positioning using HBC’s case. “HBC has carefully monitored its margins and spending, maintained its discount brand (Zellers) in order to successfully compete with Walmart, and survived as one of Canada’s only two national department store” (65). Then they further describe how HBC refurbish its brand, “HBC hired Bonnie Brooks in 2008 to revamp its brand”, “She dropped many underperforming product lines and brought in trendy product lines such as Coach and Top Shop” (65). This explanation also supports my
through the corporate ladder is a great way to motivate employees, overworking might not be the best method, as it can cause burnout and unmotivated employees. Providing low pay and/or incentives to employees is also, in my opinion, not the best way to influence motivational employees who will put forth hard work, and be loyal to the company.
Lowe’s grew through strategic choice by heavily focusing on key functional areas involving research and development (R&D), marketing, and logistics. Lowe’s important R&D investments included the creation of two prototype stores. The first prototype with 147,000 square feet catered to large markets and the other with 120,000 square feet catered to smaller markets (Rouse, 2005). Lowe’s used these store prototypes to help guide their continued growth and store placement. The prototypes also aided the company in designing future stores more efficiently with respect to energy and sustainability (Lowe’s Companies, Inc., n.d.). Furthermore, Lowe’s marketing strategy concentrated on attracting new customers and enhancing current customer satisfaction. To bring new customers to the store, Lowe’s engaged in a pull marketing strategy (Wheelen & Hunger, 2012). The com...
(The retail industry main aspect includes small stores that sell products directly to consumers. Mike took over the lease of a building and wanted to transform it into a fully functional department store that offered a variety of products.)
I would suggest that they incorporate more diversity in their ads and campaigns to reach different ethnicities if they want to continue to expand. Also, in stores, particularly the Willow Grove, PA location, is very large and spacious. Upon entering the store it is primarily women’s apparel and accessories, as well as men’s. Maybe the company can incorporate more of its products in this location, to provide consumers with more of a product assortment.
In 2002, CEO of Levi Strauss, Phil Marineau was faced with a tough decision: whether he should sell product at Wal-Mart. In the last five years, Levi-Strauss had lost sales and had to close US plants to move production to cheaper offshore areas. Levi's really needed to revive the brand image to gain back some lost sales and was using marketing to create new advertisements and product placement to broaden their target market. Levi's had tough competition on every level of the price-point spectrum, whether it be high end retailers like Diesel or Calvin Klein, middle vertically integrated retailers like Gap or American Eagles, and on the bottom, private-label brands like Wal-Mart and Target.
Offering special products is marked under strengths and opportunity; however, long term sustainability must ease the weaknesses and threats posed by competitors and external markets forces. However, they are several other strengths of this company that outweigh the weaknesses but can easily be threatened. Lululemon has a great brand equity and knowledge in the market which has helped them development a customer loyalty. While Lululemon’s strengths is challenging, limiting their products to a special market, with higher than normal prices opens the markets for competitors. Lululemon has several weaknesses, they only offer a specialty product and it mostly aimed to attract woman. The company’s profitability has decreased over the recent years, showing the necessity for Lululemon to sustain its economic growth through product diversification and geographical expansion. Many of their competitors have grown, mostly likely due to their global growth and divarication. If Lululemon would expand their market growth this would open up so much more opportunity for this company to grow. One of their weaknesses is there is the dependence on suppliers. This opens a great opportunity for Lululemon, right now they are heavily relying on suppliers around the world and they do not have their own manufacturing facilities. This is causing the company to spend more money of vendors to
Weave Tech has several strategic challenges and opportunities since the purchase of the once then called Johnson-ware apparel in 2007. Since the organization has had the challenge of rebranding themselves to attract a new customer base which is also an opportunity to grow the organization. Weave Tech has to reposition the organization to be successful throughout the changes. Another strategic challenge the organization is undergoing is reorganizing and attracting a new management team which causes for cuts and layoffs. These cuts and layoffs can drastically effect the morale of other employees and ultimately production. Over the next 3 years Weave Tech goal will be to strategically handle these challenges and opportunities while
By putting the warehouses in strategic locations, you provide better access to those customers in more remote locations. By taking advantage of this, Under Armour will not only expose itself to new customers, but will be able to continue to dominate the athletic performance apparel industry.
Marks & Spencer is one of the UK's foremost retailers of clothing, foods, homeware and financial services, boasting a weekly customer base of 10 million in over 300 UK stores. Marks & Spencer operate in 30 countries worldwide, and has a group turnover in excess of £8 billion. It has specific values, missions and visions. It’s main vision is ‘to be the standard against which all others are measured’, it’s main mission is ‘to make aspirational quality accessible to all’, and it’s main values are quality, service, innovation and trust. (www.marksandspencer.co.uk).
To get started, we first need to understand what Crocs' value chain is and how that process plays a role in the strategic direction of the company. The authors of our text, views the value chain as "the entire series of organizational work activities that add value at each step, from raw materials to finished product. In its entirety, the value chain can encompass supplier's suppliers to the customer's customers"(Robbins & Coulter, 2009, p.430). At Crocs, the entire series of organization work activities may be broken down even further using Porter's value chain model of viewing a manufacturing (or service) primary and secondary activities as a "system made up of subsystems, each with inputs, transformation processes and outputs"(Ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk, 2011). A diagram, compliments of Porter(1985) can be seen below:
This part of the report will highlight the problems within the external environment that affect Marks and Spencer. Before planning and decision making can take place an organisation must be aware of these issues. The key factors that impact upon all organisations are Political, Economic, Social and Technological. These factors are commonly referred to as PEST factors. Political changes like change of government could affect the minimum wage that M&S workers are paid. Economic factors such as inflation could affect the pricing of garments. The Social factors that would need to be taken into account are lifestyle changes and demographics, M&S would need to consider where their target market stood. Technological advances could also affect M&S sales just recently their website has been updated from a corporate site to a new website offering online buying. Globalisation is a huge environmental factor affecting M&S. Globalisation is the increase in cross-border economic, social and technological exchange. For organisations it increases competition and the search for cost advantages.
The theme of racism is strongly depicted in William Shakespeare's Othello. It depicts the attitude of European society towards those that were different in colour, race and language. In Europe, people of white complexion were the majority and all other races were considered to be less important and inferior.