Case: Edward Marshall Boehm, Inc
Edward Marshall Boehm, Inc. is a company that produces unique and high quality porcelain products mainly focusing on birds, flowers, and wildlife. The objective of the company is to raise awareness of Mr. Boehm’s artist talent, create appreciation and protection for threatened and vanishing species. Meanwhile, Mr. Boehm wants to build a business that could make them wealthy. There are two main problems facing by the company. First, the process of making these porcelain products is complicated and required elaborate technical skills, the company does not have enough skilled staffs and producing power to meet the demand from the market. Second, the company lacks of enough distribution channels to raise awareness of its brand and the uniqueness of its products.
At the current stage, the company has three series of porcelain in its product lines, which are priced from $100 to over $20,000. Each piece of porcelain sculpture requires a 52-step process. Some of products are sold out for years in advance, and it is difficult to anticipate which pieces might achieve this distinction. In addition, the company has only one distributor, Minton China, to distribute its products to some 175 retail outlets in the United States.
The company can try to reduce costs by using other materials at a lower cost, developing a faster production process, but the bottom line is since the most competitive advantage of the company is the uniqueness and high quality of the product, the company should preserve its quality instead of using cheaper materials or faster production time that may violates the value of its products.
In order to continue the business in the long run, the company should adapt the following changes. First, the company should hire more staffs and train them to produce the products in order to increase production of lower priced products. Meanwhile, it should find more distributors to raise awareness of the