Forest Hill Paper Company

In 1982 Barbara Bradley Baekgaard and Patricia Miller, Vera Bradley’s co-CEOs, saw an opportunity for vibrant and trendy luggage, and started Vera Bradley. The company grew quickly in the 2000s as their products were viewed as unique and allowed consumers to express their style. In order to be competitive in the market as the number of rivals in the industry grew; Vera Bradley had to turn its attention to its key success factors (Appendix E). The company also had to see which factors would create a sustainable competitive advantage (Appendix G). These factors, including multi-channel distribution, brand image, and product variety, contributed to the overall worth of the company, which in turn boosted its reputation. Vera Bradley had been having troubles in the recent years. Its current strategy was proving to be ineffective (Appendix J). Its growth had come to a halt, and revenues slipped by 15%. The compound annual growth rate for Vera Bradley between 2013-2014 was negative, which showed that the company was having some strategic issues (Appendix F). Compared to its competition, Vera Bradley was ranked lower than all rivals in the market (Appendix H). As the industry grew larger and more rivals emerged, Vera Bradley had to make changes to their strategy. The

1. How would you classify Forest Hill Paper Company in terms of size and ownership?

In December 2006, Bob Prescott, the controller for the Blue Ridge Mill, was considering the addition of a new on-site longwood woodyard. Two primary benefits for this new addition include eliminating the need to purchase shortwood from an outside supplier and creating an opportunity to sell shortwood on the open market. Also, the new woodward would reduce operating costs and increase revenues. Blue Ridge Mill currently purchased

More shelf and trade promotion: The third strategy would be to spend more money on shelf

The company is the corporation’s question mark performer and has the potential of becoming a star performer given the limited competition in the market. The company has the advantage of the parent corporation’s 25-year-old positive reputation as a local family owned business known for the quality of their products.

Mendel Paper Company has been doing relatively well with the sales of computer paper, napkins, place mats, and poster board. With more people eating out, the demand for napkins and place mats have increased. Computer paper and poster boards have slowly increased in demand as well. However, there is concern at the company with the fixed cost of operations. Marlene Herbert, the plant superintendent, said, “As we have automated our operation, we have experienced increases in fixed overhead and even variable overhead. And, we will have to add more equipment since it appears that we need even more plant capacity. We are operating over our normal capacity as it is.” (Case 2B). With the new production costs added in, will

Lowe’s was ranked 42nd in the Forbes 500 top companies in 2009. It has grown into the 2nd largest home improvement retailer in the United States. In constant competition with Home Depot and other stores, Lowe’s must find a way to remain competitive in an oligopoly marketplace. It is important to understand not only what type of market Lowe’s operates in but also the advantages and disadvantages when reviewing margin and profits.

About a million tons of paper are used every day around the world and 93% of it comes from trees. Half of municipal waste is paper. About 20,000,000 trees are cut annually. (Mittal, 2009) Trees are very important to the environment, cutting them is affecting the environment negatively. In a year for this task alone, we print a total of 2,700 pages of paper. 8 trees of 8-inch diameter and 45 feet produce 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of paper. 500 sheets of paper weights 5 pounds, which is about 1,000 to 2,000 sheets per tree. By saving 2,700 sheets of paper a year we will be saving a tree. (Schildgen,

All segments are critical for the implementation of our company’s strategy because we chose to be broad cost leaders. Cost leaders maintain a presence in all market segments by focusing on low production costs and competitive pricing. With that in mind, one segment is considered to be slightly more important than the others: the low end segment. We will compete in every market segment, but this is one of the most important due to the fact that price is the main consideration of the buying criteria at 53% importance. Our costs will be much lower than our competitors which translates into a lower market price for this product, which is ideal for our customers.

With giants such as Walmart, and Kroger running the grocery store industry it’s difficult for companies such as Smuckers to bargain for shelf-space and prices. Brand name items drawn to the center of the store are what leverages these companies to succeed in the industry. After numerous acquisitions and strategic alliances, Smuckers developed a solid core of product lines which experienced success rapidly. Product lines that experienced the most success as a result of strong positioning in the industry included their Coffee labels, flour and baking products, Oils and food spreads. A 9-Cell Industry Attractiveness/Business Strength Matrix shows that the Industry attractiveness is relatively moderate. With many competitors and strong buyer power from large grocery chains such as Kroger, companies such as Smuckers have explored different strategies that have proved successful in what can be described as a saturated industry. The case insinuates that there may be opportunities in the industry in regards to special markets and perhaps Oils and Baking with sugar free products, but otherwise the recession, although it drove families to buy store bought as opposed to eating out, has had its effects on the food service industry as well.

The Pillsbury Cookie Challenge is a case study written by Natalie Mauro under the supervision of Professor Allison Johnson. The case study creates an open discussion about what the marketing manager of the refrigerated baked goods category for Canada General Mills should do to revive his products. Ivan Guillen, the marketing manager, was faced with tough challenges. He was initially “…faced with the challenge of developing a strategy that would lead to improved business performance on his category” (Johnson and Mauro, p.1, 2011). To clarify, Guillen’s category is refrigerated baked goods (RBG), which means, this category is his marketing responsibility. The issue here is that “RBG was GMCC’s fourth largest category, and its performance over the past two years had been less than stellar” (Johnson and Mauro, p.1, 2011). It is important to note that GMCC stands for General Mills Canada Corporation. Pillsbury has enjoyed majority market share in the RBG category in Canada, however, recently, the market was experiencing only moderate growth. Guillen was disappointed that their goal of 5%-7% market growth was not being achieved mainly in the refrigerated cookie dough segment. To be exact, their volume growth for two years was flat and they were having difficulty reaching new households. There was a shift among consumer’s purchases, which Guillen was challenged to figure out why.

As marketing manager of the RBG business, Ivan Guillen must propose a solution to repair Pillsbury refrigerated baked goods (RGB)’s business performance. Since the refrigerated-cookie product line consisted of 62% of RBG’s unit sales and over 75% of the company’s profits, Guillen found it appropriate to alter this segment in the market. Proposing this idea to GMCC would require Guillen to consider all the challenges he faces. Guillen will have to discover a strategy to increase household penetration since it has fallen to 24% in the past few years. The lack in market penetration has

Office Depot achieves its strategy by offering products that are less expensive than its competitors. This allows Office Depot to make sales to the largest possible consumer base and yet, at the same, still differentiating itself by providing more of the problem solving, and innovativeness desired by many corporate and some retail customers. Over the past twenty five years, Office Depot has been able to enter into various global locations and develop or maintained its competitive advantage by following this strategy. In fact, this strategy has paid off well over the past several years. Office Depot consistently ranks high in terms of customer recall of office supplies and business solutions. This quantitative measurement may be used by Office Depot to quantify the Company’s growth in this area.

Currently Atlantic’s existing Ohio linerboard mill produces 780 tons per day of linerboard, which represents a mere 1.8% of the nation’s linerboard capacity. This is far below the 150,000 tons of linerboard that Atlantic purchases every year from its competitors. Consequently, with such a tight market, linerboard could either become unavailable or available at very expensive prices. If Atlantic pursues their acquisition strategy in purchasing the linerboard mills from Royal, this could help greatly in strengthening Atlantic’s linerboard capacity and ensure to retain their box plants profits. With Royal’s current Monticello mill producing kraft paper and linerboard, this would require $140.8 million to convert all of the mill’s kraft capacity to

1. How would you classify Forest Hill Paper Company in terms of size and ownership?