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Easy on starting a business
Easy on starting a business
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Wicks n ' More is known for their high-quality, hand-poured fragrance candles. I had the chance to sit down with the co-founders and former owners, Beckey and Kim Neal. Wicks n ' More was founded in 1998 by mother and daughter, in their home garage as a hobby. Both, Beckey and Kim, gave their opinion about a small family business and about their business experience. Our discussion of their business growth, product line, product strategy, and new inventions relates to the product development of a small business. Their business is successful and is now a multi-million dollar business where fragranced candles are sold all over the world. Beckey and Kim worked full time as a nurse and a medical tech, respectively in Tupelo, MS. They faced a …show more content…
According to the book, to gain competitive advantage a few rules to follow are: basing innovations off of experience, focusing on products that have been overlooked, be sure that there is a market for the product, and focusing on new ideas that lead to more than one product. Once the company was able to get the equipment they needed, the candles came in all shapes and sizes to extend the product line. Beckey and Kim knew that they needed to create different types of candles with different scents. Beckey 's twenty years of experience in oil landscape painting gave the company the advantage to know what types of oils that needed to be used. Kim 's decorative touch gave the company an advantage to keep the product line elegant, which is what they are known for. They wanted to keep the elegant look of the candles, but hopefully give more options to customers and wholesalers. This gave the company the competitive advantage over their …show more content…
My question to them "what would you recommend to those who want to be future business owners?" They responded with "be sure you have the funds and that you trust the people you are in business with." Beckey also said to focus on a niche and the target market that you want to acquire. "One of the best things and worst things about being in a family business is seeing your family every day," Beckey said. She went into detail about the different examples where the family would begin to disagree on things due to the emotions that were outside of business. Beckey decided it was time to sell the company to another family that would carry on the legacy of Wicks n ' More and further it in business. The company is currently owned by a small family that has kept the business running for the three years after Beckey and Kim sold
The strategy for competing in the market was a broad-differentiation strategy. It was broad because it produced a large variety of products such as clamps, inserts, knobs, and similar items. Also, it differentiates from the other metal companies because of its good quality, good delivery, and reasonable price.
They had several questions that they would like answered. If they do proceed with the sale, how should they negotiate for a maximum price? How could they hold the meetings with the prospective buyers and not let the employees find out about the transaction prematurely? Should they organize an auction to sell the company? Will it generate adverse publicity if they decided not to sell after the auction?
Building blocks of the competitive advantage is very effectiveness, worth, improvement and customer approachability. These particular building blocks in general have four common techniques in cutting down and getting excellence. Anyone can have the capabilities in implementing these.
When looking at YourFire Inc. and its five-competitive force we can see what is more profitable to the company and industry. For instance, they have a low barrier to entry, but more expensive to start up in the market for camp stoves. Therefore, rivalry among existing firms is strong. Although, they will not have to worry about new entrants due to their unique product. In addition, the threat of substitute camping stoves is limited. It will be more difficult for competitors to manipulate such engineering skills that produced in Yourfire. Whereas, perhaps customers relatively strong with the ability to select other camping stoves based on their performances and price. Their power of suppliers with raw materials is a strong force since the company
I agree with this statement. When it comes to trying to break into an industry and have a competitive advantage over the rest, the strategy we have to use has to be distinctive. This means we have to come up with a different approach to capture our customers to make them want to use our product rather than product’s from the industry’s leaders. The best competitive position is always to have no competition. To achieve that level, organizations should not be following what the leaders are doing instead they should formulate, implement and deploy a distinctive strategy that changes the rules of the business game in their favor.
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
(2015), indicates that feasibility analysis is conducting preliminary research to determine if there is a potential problem in the market. A market analysis and lifecycles will define the industry strengths, weakness, innovation, cost, maturity and decline phases. The product development cycle and market strategies must be in place during the introduction of the service or product in order to be competitive. The text book, Bessant, J., & Tidd, J. (2015), it states: “An effective competitive strategy either differentiates the new venture from existing ventures, creates a niche in the market that other companies are not serving, or has access to resources that others in the industry do not”. For Deb’s Event /Party Planning business the company our goal is to outperform the rivals and have a competitive advantage of the product. The text indicates that using the Porte’s five that provides an effective way of looking at the structure of a business and the competitive strength and positioning to the
*Making Sense of Eight Competitive Positions* (*https://www.mindtools.com/community/pages/article/newSTR_93.htm) In many open markets, most goods and services can be purchased from any number of companies, and customers have a tremendous amount of choice. It’s the job of companies in the market to find their competitive edge and meet customers needs better than the next company. So, how, given the high degree of competitiveness among companies in a marketplace, does one company gain competitive advantage over the others? When there are only a finite number of unique products and services out there, how do different organizations sell basically the same things at different prices and with different degrees of success? This is a classic question that has been asked for generations of business professionals. In 1980, Michael Porter published his seminal book, "Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors", where he reduced competition down to three classic strategies: cost leadership product differentiation; and market segmentation. These generic strategies represented the three ways in which an organization could provide its customers with what they wanted at a better price, or more effectively than others. Essentially Porter maintained that companies compete either on price (cost), on perceived value (differentiation), or by focusing on a very specific customer (market segmentation). Competing through lower prices or through offering more perceived value became a very popular way to think of competitive advantage. For many businesspeople, however, these strategies were a bit too general, and they wanted to think about different value and price combinations in more detail. Looking at Porter's strategies in a different way, in 1996, Cliff Bowman and David Faulkner developed Bowman’s Strategy Clock. This model of corporate strategy extends Porter’s three strategic positions to eight, and explains the cost and perceived value combinations many firms use, as well as identifying the likelihood of success for each strategy. Figure 1 below, represents Bowman’s eight different strategies that are identified by varying levels of price and value. {draw:frame} Position 1: Low Price/Low Value
Competitive advantage is the advantage for the competitors and gained by the offerings from the consumers that have the greater value either by the low prices of the products and by providing the benefits and services to the consumers that denotes the high price. It is a set of the innovative and different features of the company and the products and services sale to the consumers so that company can achieve the targets what they have decided and it is the betterment for the enterprise in the competitive market (Porter, 2011). There are three determinants which can be used in the competitive advantage that what the company produce for their consumers, their target market that what they have to achieved and the competition from the other entity
The key issues for K-Mart strategies are finding the right cost level for an opportunity to be aggressive, and differentiating the product for consumer in terms of different consumer and different intangible product attributes. K-Mart and Sears should be combined with a new overall corporate competitive strategy using a cost focus. This may turn out to be the only sensible strategy, and the one which best describes the strategy adopted. Strategies of cost leadership and product differentiation are often described as if they were mutually exclusive you can either pursue one or the other, but not both.
Our group approached a set of critical analyses to examine the company’s competitive advantages, to analyse the oppor...
of a firm to attain new forms of competitive advantage (Müller, 2011). It is due to these
When you do find your answers, be sure to include every factor that can contribute to your success – your products and services, your operating method, your unique company qualities and customer service attitude, your values, etc. Whatever you learned from your competitive analysis can definitely help you create powerful marketing campaigns that will help you more effectively sell your products and services to your target
Hendersern and Stern 2000, ‘Untangling the origins of competitive advantage’,Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 21, pp. 1123-1145.
Competitive strategy is the approach that an organisation takes in order to gain advantage over its competitors. According to Porter, there are two major sources of competitive advantages: costs and differentiation. Cost-based competitive advantage involves reducing production costs so that an organisation can earn higher profit margin or offer products at lower price compared to competitors. Differentiation-based competitive advantage involves offering unique properties that are not offered by competitors’ products. Differentiation allows an organisation to charge a premium for their products because they offer additional benefits to buyers.