Whatever your long-term game plan for your business, if you lose control of your "brand" you have lost whatever hopes you had!
If you take a trip to any clearance discount retailer and you will see once great premium brands reduced to being sold in a dump bin with clearance stickers all over them or if they don't make it there, it just disappears into the annuls of time of a brand of the past
I have worked with many brands over the years and in the more recent years I can recall 2 majors players in their market place have said directly to me " We wish we had listened to you 5 years ago" What made them say that!
Firstly: The percentage of working IN their business and working ON it needs to be balanced according to the needs of the business!
Secondly: Sales growth targets did not align to the strategic plan
Both take time to work through and need raised awareness. The challenge for these two businesses was that they did not see what 5 years forward would look like.
With one of the businesses, a core customers were 2 years ahead in terms of technology and need for service delivery at pace, just in time and accurate supplier stock level data
The other, they just did not see how online marketplaces would decimate their customer facing resellers and therefore started losing brick only accounts at a rate of knots and then just as fast losing Click and Brick retailers as they were being forced to lower the retail prices of the brand to with no reduction in cost prices to compensate for higher operating costs.
In both these cases, their customer found alternative suppliers to meet their needs.
As these two Brands where manufacturing in the far east, to meet sales forecasts 14 months ahead, they had over bought.
I wonder where their excess stock may have ended up?
If you are finding you are not seeing the wood for the trees or the forests for the woodland, its is time to get support to help raise your awareness to chunk up or down as needed. Call for a chat
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