Saxonville
2085
JUNE 15, 2007
KATE MOORE
Saxonville Sausage Company
On a sunny March day in 2006, Ann Banks, new product marketing director at Saxonville Sausage
Company, stood waiting outside the executive conference room. The owner, president, chief financial officer, and three functional vice presidents—including her manager, Vice President of
Marketing Steve Sears—would soon hear her plan for launching a national Italian sausage brand that
Saxonville needed to bring to market in order to achieve its profit objectives for the next fiscal year.
Banks reflected back over the lessons of the past six months.
Saxonville’s Background
Saxonville was a 70-year-old, privately held family business headquartered in Saxonville, Ohio, with 2005 revenues of approximately $1.5 billion. The company produced a variety of pork sausage products, predominantly fresh sausage as opposed to smoked or semi-dried. The heart of the business consisted of branded products: bratwurst (70% of Saxonville’s revenues); breakfast sausage, both links and patties (20% of revenues); and an Italian sausage named Vivio (5% of revenues). Storebrand products accounted for the additional 5% of revenues. While the bratwurst and breakfast products were sold throughout the United States via both national and regional brokers and distributors, the products had very little distribution in stores in the Northeastern markets.
Since 2004, both the bratwurst and breakfast categories across all sausage producers had been flat
(0% volume increase) nationwide, with little or no growth expected in the short term. Saxonville’s own brats sales had been flat, but in breakfast sausage the company had underperformed the market, resulting in a double-digit revenue decline; in December 2005, Saxonville ranked sixth out of eight national breakfast sausage brands. Italian sausage was the one category showing growth across producers in the retail sausage market, having grown at an annual rate of 9% in 2004
JUNE 15, 2007
KATE MOORE
Saxonville Sausage Company
On a sunny March day in 2006, Ann Banks, new product marketing director at Saxonville Sausage
Company, stood waiting outside the executive conference room. The owner, president, chief financial officer, and three functional vice presidents—including her manager, Vice President of
Marketing Steve Sears—would soon hear her plan for launching a national Italian sausage brand that
Saxonville needed to bring to market in order to achieve its profit objectives for the next fiscal year.
Banks reflected back over the lessons of the past six months.
Saxonville’s Background
Saxonville was a 70-year-old, privately held family business headquartered in Saxonville, Ohio, with 2005 revenues of approximately $1.5 billion. The company produced a variety of pork sausage products, predominantly fresh sausage as opposed to smoked or semi-dried. The heart of the business consisted of branded products: bratwurst (70% of Saxonville’s revenues); breakfast sausage, both links and patties (20% of revenues); and an Italian sausage named Vivio (5% of revenues). Storebrand products accounted for the additional 5% of revenues. While the bratwurst and breakfast products were sold throughout the United States via both national and regional brokers and distributors, the products had very little distribution in stores in the Northeastern markets.
Since 2004, both the bratwurst and breakfast categories across all sausage producers had been flat
(0% volume increase) nationwide, with little or no growth expected in the short term. Saxonville’s own brats sales had been flat, but in breakfast sausage the company had underperformed the market, resulting in a double-digit revenue decline; in December 2005, Saxonville ranked sixth out of eight national breakfast sausage brands. Italian sausage was the one category showing growth across producers in the retail sausage market, having grown at an annual rate of 9% in 2004