Introduction
There are many businesses failing in the world today but there also a lot of business thriving. It is situations like this that leads to potential entrepreneurs to ask the question of why are some businesses successful while others are not. This course has given me some insight as to why some businesses fail. Having that information would make me better prepared for when I decide to start my business.
My Failed Business Choice
The company I chose to do research on is Borders Group, Inc. “Borders Group, Inc. is now the second largest bookstore in the world” (Hoover's company profiles, 2011). This is a company that I just recently found out about. I love book stores and living in a town where the bookstores are very few that when I am out of town I am looking for a Barnes & Nobles or Books-A-Million to visit before returning home. On one of my last trips I discovered Borders. To me this place was another great book store for me and my family to stock up on some great deals for books. Imagine the disappointment I felt when learning that Borders Group, Inc. “filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing $1.275 billion in assets and $1.293 billion in debts in its filing. The company also announced the liquidation and closing of 226 stores” (Hoover's company profiles, 2011).
Company History
“Borders Group, Inc. was originally Borders and it was a used bookstore that was established by Tom and Louis Borders in 1971 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The bookstore was very popular in the academic community. It wasn’t long before the brothers opened up more locations. Wanting to grow their business even more the brothers opened their first large-scale retail store in 1985. With the success of this store the sales shifted ...
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In 1978, when two executives Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank received news they were fired from their jobs at Handy Dan Home Improvement Centers, they decided to take something negative and turn it into an opportunity. They put their experience and knowledge of the business and industry together and developed a business plan to create a chain of home-improvement warehouses. Their idea was to create a business which would be larger and more profitable than any of their competitors. So in 1979, one year after being fired, they acquired their funding and opened three stores in Atlanta which they branded with the name Home Depot. Today, Home Depot is the world’s largest home improvement chain and second-largest retailer after Wal-Mart, operating approximately 2,250 stores throughout the Americas (Parnell, 2014).
Starting out as solely an online bookstore, Amazon has become the largest online retailer in the world.
Is Amazon a bubble waiting to burst? The following discussions in this research paper will explore several key issues from its birth to its debatable future. Amazon is not a stranger to arguments revolving around questions of its longevity and success. When the systemic bubble of 1999 arrived Amazon’s corporate goal was to get big, to do it fast, and to establish a hold of new markets before any other competitor. During this time frame Amazon began branching out and selling anything and everything. With the burst of the internet bubble in 2000 and 2001, Amazon changed its goal from growth to aggressively making profits in all areas of their business. In 2001, Amazon’s founder and CEO stated in a Wall Street Journal article “We’ll ferociously manage the products we carry so that we sell only products that are profitable. The thirty-pound box of nails isn’t long for our world” (Elmer-DeWitt, 2001).
According to the Kohl’s Corporation Hoover Report (2014), in the late 1920s, a man named Max Kohl opened a grocery store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Hoover Report, 2014, pg. 9). By 1938, Max and his three sons had developed his store into a successful chain and incorporated the business. Max Kohl had experienced enough success by 1962 that he opened a department store right next to his Kohl’s grocery store. In 1972, Max Kohl and his family’s “65 food stores and five department stores were generating about $90 million in yearly sales” (pg. 9) In the same year, the British American Tobacco’s Brown & Williamson Industries (BATUS) purchased 80% of the Kohls’ two operations. Six years later, BATUS proceeded to purchase what remained of Kohl’s. In the early 1980s, BATUS decided that “Kohl’s discount image did not fit in with BATUS’s other retail operations” and decided to ultimately separate the two operations in order to put them up for sale (pg. 9). The president and chief executive officer at the time, William Kellogg, “and two other executives, with the backing of mall developers Herbert and Melvin Simon, led an LBO (leveraged buy-out) to acquire the chain’s 40 stores and a distribution center” (pg. 9). By the time Kohl’s managed to go public in the year 1992, they “had 81 stores in six states, and sales topped $1 billion” (pg. 9). At this time Kohl’s began its expansion and within the next five years managed to top sales at two billion dollars. Kohl’s then “acquired a former Bradlees store to enter New Jersey and opened stores in Washington, DC; Philadelphia; New York; and Delaware” (pg. 9). The following year Kohl’s managed to expand into Tennessee by adding new stores. The company named Larry Montgomery CEO in 1999 and short...
When founder and CEO Jeff Bezos studied retailing opportunities on the Internet, he decided on books because there was a broad field of book publishers but too many titles to be carried by a single store. Everyone reads books but has different preferences about what s/he wants to read. Although Jeff Bezos had no previous experience in the book trade, he saw a business opportunity in selling books solely on the Web. He started the company out of his garage in a Seattle suburb, wrapping orders and then delivering them to the post office in the family car. The characteristics of the books retailing industry make it amenable to electronic commerce: a great variety of products and consumer tastes, and tastes which hanker after a lot of information about the products. Moreover, there is room for bringing down margins, i.e. offering customers deep discounts.
The company started as an online book seller, which then rapidly expanded into music and movies, and finally into electronics and households.
Contemporary management of the business. 7 ed. of the book. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. McComb, S., Schroeder, A., Kennedy, D., & Vozdolska, R. (2012).
Amazon also started to expand the categories of products they sold. Their initial business plan took into account that there would be no profit for five years, selling books at wholesale value from Ingram Content Group, known before as Ingram Book. After surviving the dot.com bubble burst, Amazon grew and turned a profit of five million dollars in 2001. Around this time there was a change in the strategy; Amazon began to spread across the world, building subsidiaries and formed various alliances with companies such as Toys R Us, Borders and Target. However, these alliances only lasted until 2006 for Toys R Us, 2008 for Borders, and 2011 for
Unfortunately, many small businesses fail or do not reach their full potential because the small business owner spends too much time working in the business, and too little time working on the business.
The first part provides reasons why starting a new business is profitable in terms of having higher or bigger possibility for growth of the business and higher rate of return. The second part highlights the originality of starting a new business as an entrepreneur. The last part mentions why starting a new business is more entrepreneurial than franchising in terms of entrepreneurial skills and
The lesson on success and not giving up was one of the most important things I learned about entrepreneurial thinking in this class. This lesson really impacted me because it showed me that even people we consider extremely successful today were told they could not do it and failed multiple times before their success.
Small businesses have been considered the mainstay in countries around the world. In many European countries for example, the small business has been considered crucial to the success and flourishment of the country in general. Most individuals start upon a small business venture in the hopes of realizing ownership, independent profits and personal success. Small businesses can prove extremely successful when planned properly. Studies suggest that several small businesses, however, close or fail within the first few years of operation. This failure suggests that a majority of small business owners may not have as yet realized the crucial success factors necessary for successful implementation of a small business.
We learned a lot of things in this course, but I think the most important lesson I learned is that it’s not easy to be an entrepreneur. I was surprised to hear in the first class that 80% of startups fail, but after reading The Art of Start and E-myth Revisited I understood why this happens more often than one might expects. Some people start their own businesses for the wrong reason and some start with wrong mindset. I’ve always thought that if someone has a brilliant business idea and hardworking they will succeed and grow their business. However, now I know that there are many things to consider before starting any business. In fact, there are many strategies that an entrepreneur could follow to achieve success, such as know your customers, work “on” the business, and how
find it difficult to set up a business and make it a success. This is
The path to achieving great success is not easy. Whereas there are many shortcuts, the long and patient walk is what takes a person many miles ahead. This concept applies to any individual who aims at becoming a successful businessman. The process of becoming a successful businessman requires a person to attain several accomplishment levels. Each of the level takes energy and time, as well as the ability to recognize the things that make a person truly successful in the business world and life. Becoming a successful businessman requires measurements that take into account not only the monetary and material gains but also the greater scheme of things. Therefore, true success measure achieves in light of creating wealth and value. These factors are vital in the lifetime of success as they present an intangible worth and measurable profit. This essay discusses the way a person can become successful as a businessman.