Team Baldwin: Competitive Advantage

We evaluated our company’s position in the industry, and found ourselves in an excellent starting position to further develop our products and match them to the industry’s needs. Our market share is adequate and we can advance further with our strategy improve and reposition our products in the coming years. We have underutilized capacity, which we intend to improve, while increasing automation to reduce costs. We have plans to improve our promotion to improve product awareness and with the appropriate product lines we will increase price to improve margins and better align our high-end product image. Our current financial position is optimistic, showing our leverage (Assets/Equity) at 2.0, when our goal is to maintain 1.5-2.0 overall. By utilizing the analysis tools we are learning what elements are driving demand, how to effectively tailor our products through R&D, how best to adjust our marketing and pricing, while lowering input costs, in order to improve margins and to ensure our stakeholders are all satisfied.

The initial strategy was to maintain a competitive presence in each segment by keeping our prices aligned with the average for each target market, while maintaining costs low. Specifically, it was our goal to become the leader in Traditional and low-end segments of the sensor business by allocating significant resources to R&D, marketing and promotions for these products. Our differentiator would be the result of a high investment in R&D to ensure our products were the best available.

R&D. In the first round, we tried to maintain a presence in every segment of our products by improving the performance and decreasing the size. We improved all of our products

In this case study, we will be analyzing the current position of how well Kingsford is within the marketplace and determine which of the issues are plausible causes in its drop in revenue. We will be creating a comprehensive strategy as well as a marketing plan to evaluate and adjust the matter at hand. First we will begin with identifying the issues and implementing a method to reemphasize the importance of marketing in the business. The goal is to create a marketing plan that will add value to Kingsford’s market share, sales, and profitability.

Step 1: The business strategy goals are to capitalize on specialty products and offer products for all incomes. The business strategy is a collaboration of the broad differentiation strategy and focused market niche strategy. The broad differentiation strategy concentrates on “seeking to differentiate the company 's product offering from rivals ' in ways that will appeal to a broad spectrum of buyers.” The focused market niche strategy principles are differentiation and concentrating on a narrow buyer segment that may outcompete rivals by offering niche members customized attributes that meet their tastes and requirements better than rivals ' products” (Thompson, Gamble, & Strickland, 2006, p. 114).

The return on equity (ROE) has also shown an increase in 2009 over the previous year suggesting a successful investment by shareholders. This increase, coupled with the fact that the basic earnings per share (EPS) has increased significantly from 61.78 cents in 2008 to 88.26 cents in 2009 (143%) shows great improvement in the profit per share. Please note that the basic EPS has been used in this analysis as the diluted EPS includes employee options (JBH Annual Report, 2009), skewing and reducing the value of the EPS.

During this time, sales increased from: $7.11 billion in 2010 to $7.99 billion in 2012. Earnings improved from $2.84 to $3.57. While the total amount of dividends rose from $1.00 to $1.72. These figures are showing how the company has been continually increasing sales, earnings and dividends over the last three years. In the future, the management predicts that their current strategy will increase returns. As, executives believe that their focus on building the brand and accounting for costs will lead to net earnings of $5.20 to $7.19 annually by

We are the Baldwin’s after assessing our Practice Round results I decide to look at from the the following two perspective of our four Decision Areas (Marketing and Finance). These two areas had an impact on our performance. For our overall cash flow we had a net change in cash of 10,126. We learned that we should have actually used our option to retire long term debt. We probably didn’t have to put 2,000 cash from our current debt. Also we should have increased the price for our product Bead. We went below market value which left open supplies for our competitions. We did not require an emergency fund this round which benefited and added to our profits. We learned that we should actually spend more funds in marketing our products

After considering the operational improvements forecasted, we project Robertson’s free cash flows and compute the terminal value using the Gordon Growth Method; the implied share price is analyzed further in accordance to growth rate and discount rate.

Andrews integrated Cost Leader/Differentiator with Product Lifecycle Focus strategy. They invested huge amount of capital in high-end, low-end, and traditional segments. In order to reduce the labor cost for the long term, they add four automation levels in the low-end segment. They intends to move their product Adam from high end to low end gradually, therefore, Adam didn’t be revised so much at the first round. In the third round, Adam successfully fell into the traditional segment. On the evidence of adding automation to Adam in the second round, our conjecture can be proved. Additionally, heavily invested in promotion and sales budget in the three segments lead to a high level of awareness and accessibility, as a result, they stand out from the competition right now. As team Andrew has two products in both high end and traditional segment, they will take some of our market share.

This report is going to analyse and evaluate the Ted Baker plc. by providing the most important ratios of the company and interpretations to them. Furthermore, it is going to recommend to hold shares of this company to existing shareholders and also recommend potential investors to purchase the shares of Ted Baker plc. since the return of the company is expected to be high in the nearest future.

This assignment evaluates the performance of team Baldwin around the success in managing the company over five rounds of the simulation. The assessment will be focused on the round analysis areas with key attention on inventory, profit and contribution margin, emergency loans, and stock price. In addition, the assignment reflects on the areas of improvement and how the team could have developed effectiveness in addressing these key areas in round analysis.

analysis of FHPC’s product cost, your report to the board of directors is to include strategic recommendations based

After analyzing the results from the previous quarter, it was determined that the prices set for each segment were not sufficient. Product sales priority were also not properly adjusted. With the R&D investments, sales priorities needed to be changed for the main focus to become the most profitable market segments. Prices were not competitive which in turned decreased revenue, market share, and profitability. To become more competitive we altered the prices in each market segment. The Workhorse product was the first to change, the price was lowered to $2500 in an attempt to increase sales; at this price Team 4 was still making a profit on this product, as well as making the price much more competitive. The Workhorse sales priority was also lowered to 3rd in Americas and 4th in APAC and EMEA. This product was not selling as well as we had hoped, and was no longer as profitable as it once was which led to this decision. Next, the Innovator product’s price was adjusted; this involved a price increase to $4100. This price was adjusted to include the new

The current EPS of the company is now $14-$15. Historically, the dividend payout ratio mounts to an average 50%. So, the company expects payout the payout in 1959 to be $7/share. In the previous year the dividend rate was cut from $1.3 to $1.2 per share. But after the new deal, the CEO proposed a hike in the quarterly payout to $1.6 per share from the $1.2 given at present. The CEO even suggested the dividend rate to be propped up to $1.80 in 1960.