Holey Soles Case Study

Profitability. The company strategy is to target only 25-45 years for specialist sportswear products, but a lot of

Larger stores also offer people the convenience of additional services along with their shopping, for example post office, pharmacy and opticians. By addressing consumer’s expectations and using their buyer power they can offer a choice of products to reflect consumer’s diverse budgetary, dietary, ethical and environmental requirements. Furthermore their global buyer power enables consumers to benefit from choosing exotic produce all year round. With 30,000,000 customers (Bevan cited in Allen, 2009) choosing to use the big four supermarkets on a weekly basis it would suggest that they provide a format that consumers want.

This case analysis will focus on the issues surround the lifestyle product company Holey Soles. Psychologist Ann Rosenberg founded the company in September 2002. She initially operated in her garage and backyard, until she recruited Joyce Groote (now current CEO of Holey Soles) and expanded the company into other parts of North America. Holey Soles focuses on creating innovative footwear made from their trademarked technology SmartCel and SoleTek, which is an injection-molded foam technology. As of July 2007, sales had grown at 300% in each of the last two years and the company was ranked number four in the 2006 Profit magazine ranking of Canada’s Emerging Growth Companies. However as they continue to operate, they

Retail sales was the largest industry in the United States prior to the 2000’s recession. It was the top employing industry from 2003 -2008 in nearly half of the U.S. states. Starting in 2009, every year has shown a decline in number of states where this is the top industry; as of 2013, retail was down to six from its peak of twenty-four. Retail is still a major industry but it will be interesting to discover how individual firms, specifically the largest ones, have handled this decline and what they may be doing to reverse the pattern. Kroger, Walmart, and Costco have the top revenues in the industry and are similarly categorized as well. Kroger is a supermarket, a larger grocery store with small section of general merchandise; Walmart is a hypermarket, contains a large range of products in both grocery and general merchandise; Costco is a warehouse club, also a large range of products but with a focus on selling large quantities at a discount with a small club fee. Since these three companies overlap in much of their products, there is competition between them which also adds to why they are respectable choices to analyze together.

Crocs, Inc., is a world-renowned innovative footwear leader, designing, manufacturing and retailing footwear for men, women and children. Crocs boasts a wide variety of more than 300 footwear style suited for all seasons, with more than 200 million pairs of shoes sold in over 90 countries around the world. (Crocs, 2014) We have shown remarkable growth and profitability since our inception to the market in 2002. As of the second quarter of 2014, Crocs’ Generally Accepted Accounting Principles revenue increased to $376.9 million. (Crocs Investors, 2014). As Crocs grew, we extended our product line and ventured into brand extension, as shown in Appendix A.

This report objective is to analyse the footwear industry regarding it main characteristics and features, pointing out the most important issues related to demand, supply and industry structure.  Environmental analysis at a Macro and Micro level, analyse the global demand trends and factors affecting it as well as a market segmentation and geographical distribution of the demand.

The rate of proliferation of chain supermarkets is very fast and the number of branches increased rapidly.

In addition to this supermarkets are increasingly developing their own label range and investing further in the convenience format.

The shift from the unorganized retail sector to the more organized retail sector that people in the more developed country such as the United States are used to be being pushed by significant shifts in the Indian population and

A key factor to recognize is that expansion and diversification are not the same. For example, opening a second retail outlet in a new town simply

The aim of this research is to provide a historical perspective as well as an understanding of the changing landscape so that the brick and mortar grocery and general merchandize retailers as well as those focusing on mobile commerce only can make changes to their business strategy in order to adapt and successfully transition through effective change management.

In the rapidly changing business trends, retail chains like MASTERS which is serving a specific purpose segments should always gauge the market trends and implement changes to its business strategies in order to stay ahead in the global competition and serving its customers. The major challenge for such a chain which has

That caused new challenges in the global markets and so the retail organisations are trying to develop new strategies for reducing those issues. Thus they recognize the importance of diverse work force and develop new

Supermarket expansion not only affects farmers in the supply chain, but also the rest of the food retail sector. Traditional retailers face extra competition and potential loss of market share, but may benefit from foreign supermarkets through spillover effects of the latest retail techniques. Large supermarket chains are also likely to affect the average retail prices in the markets they operate. These issues are studied by Basker (2005, 2007)

Good day Directors of Konciusko Merino. Today I would like to discuss with you all regarding to the expansion of your business oversea, specifically Thailand. I have analysed various aspects of Thailand in relations to your proposal of manufacturing the boots offshore as well as entering into the country’s market. To determine the most optimal strategy to achieve your proposal, we must first have a bit of an overview of the country. Various aspect such as: Thailand’s demographics, culture, economic potential, technological advancements and its trade restriction will be analysed here to allow us to better understand and determine the most optimal strategy to improve your business’ growth and profitability.