Butch's Box Shop Case Study

“Butch's Box Shop” is something which we can see on daily basis. Most of the business owners and managers are facing hard times at some point in their career either because of the economy or because of the progress and competition, just like what happened to the “Butch's Box Shop. That does not mean that they need to give up and close the company, it means exact opposite. In my opinion, and based on many examples, those kind of situations actually helps to build better business and bring up revenues to the levels where they never been before. I believe that if you try hard enough you can do anything. First of all, remember if you had profitable company for many years which you build up from scratch, it already means something. Of course, breathing new life into a business takes a solid plan and determination. The most important task is to clearly define why the business is dying. In “Butch's Box Shop” case they already knew what was wrong. One of their biggest asset- wooden box factory was slowly but surely pushed out of business by cardboard and plastic. Simply, from their customers point of view those were better alternatives for them due to the price and usage. I believe they should not even spend resources on marketing for the wooden boxes, because no matter what marketing strategy they would use, cardboard and plastic boxes are just better for storing things like food and they cannot change that. What they can do is to come up with new product line. Their situation reminds me the book I just read. It is called Blue Ocean Strategy and it is all about how to turnaround your business. The main idea is that there are two oceans. There is a red ocean full of predators, and there is a blue, empty ocean. Blue Ocean Strategy is focused on blue undiscovered ocean. For example, everybody heard about Cirque Du Soleil, but who knows