Chris Bennett
MKT 303
March 26, 2013
Crayola Analysis

Company Profile:

1. Company’s Corporate Name: a. Crayola LLC 2. Company’s Corporate Headquarters: b. 1100 Church Lane Easton, Pennsylvania 18044-0431 3. Parent Company: c. Binney and Smith was acquired by Hallmark Cards Inc in 1984. 4. Subsidiaries: d. Silly Putty e. The Crayola Experience

5. Mission Statement: f. Crayola does not currently have a company mission statement but since they are a subsidiary of Hallmark Card Inc, they could fall under their mission statement which is: “We will be the company that creates a more emotionally connected world by making a genuine difference in every life, every day.”

6. Core Competency: This part was found in Crayola’s Social and Environmental responsibility portion of their website. g. Ensuring the best product safety and quality: i. Crayola wants to provide their customers with a safe and high quality age appropriate product. Since they started in 1903 they strived to make sure all of their products are non-toxic and safe for not only people but the environment as well. They want to earn their customers trust by creating great and safe products. h. Being a good corporate citizen: ii. Crayola’s headquarters, manufacturing facilities and sales offices are located in communities where there employee’s live, so Crayola believes it is important to support and invest in these communities. They want to help create a vibrant and stable business culture in their communities. They believe in providing product and monetary donations to their local communities and organizations in need, with their main focus on the arts, health, educations and welfare. They believe in giving back to their communities and strive to make the world a better place. i. Implementing Strong environmental practices: iii. Crayola believes they need to create healthy environments for their customers to be able to be creative in. They believe in going green, which they are trying to do by putting a large solar plant in to help supply power to their manufacturing facilities. They want to minimize their environmental foot print, and continually search for new greener technologies they can implement and use.

7. Identify Major Products: j. The major products are their classic line which include: iv. Original Crayons v. Colored Pencils vi. Regular and washable markers vii. Colored chalk k. Recently Crayola has moved to making some children’s toys as well which are: viii. Bubble making toys ix. Glow in the dark coloring toys l. Adult art supplies m. Back to school supplies

8. Identify Target Markets: n. Mothers of any age that have children that are from low income to higher income as well as any education level with no religion preferences and no specific ethnicity. o. Children from ages 4 to 13 from all religions, and ethnicity. p. They target elementary schools from Kindergarten up to the 6th grade, public, charter, and private.

9. SWOT Analysis: q. Strengths: x. Crayola is a very successful brand that nearly everyone recognizes. They have built a very well known company that supplies a quality product. They have very good brand equity so very little advertising is needed which shows the strength of their brand. xi. Crayola is also a worldwide company where they sale their products in multiple companies giving them a larger market than just the United States. Crayola also developed art products that emphasized international diversity by launching Crayola My World multicultural crayons. xii. Crayola has a very successful distribution system, you can find them in many stores from big box stores to grocery stores and so on. xiii. Crayola is well-established due to their innovation. They have worked hard to keep themselves out of saturation and decline. Crayola knows how to cater to the needs of the consumer. They understand their market and how to keep customers wanting to buy their products. r. Weaknesses: xiv. Crayola is very well known for children’s products. Crayola does carry a line of markers, pastels and colored pencils they want to be focused at adults, however since they are known for children’s products adults do not think of them for their art supplies. This makes them weak in other categories that are not children’s products. xv. Some of their products can also be messy making parents not want to get them for their children because they don’t have time to deal with the clean up afterwards. s. Opportunities: xvi. Crayola has the opportunity to expand into other markets and with the correct marketing strategy they can set themselves up for success and add to their business portfolio. xvii. They have entered other countries markets and still have the opportunity to expand with those countries and enter even more countries. xviii. As they advance their technologies they can continue to do research and create new products to bring to the market. With their well known brand name is should make it easier to expand to other markets. t. Threats: xix. Now with the internet and all of the technology coming available on computers it can make some products obsolete. They have art programs now on tablets where children can draw and use all kinds of colors just like they could with crayons but without the mess and clean up. This makes their market vulnerable to this type of change and could end up shrinking their market. xx. With the economy being in a recession and public schools cutting back on funds could reduce their sales because parents and schools are more likely to purchase only the essentials and not new or non-essential school and art items.

10. Marketing Mix in reference to the 4P’s: u. Products: xxi. Crayola has many products, from crayons to markers, to toys, as well as adult art items. All products are toxic free and come with a guarantee for customer satisfaction. Crayola strives for high quality products for all consumers young and old. v. Price: xxii. Crayola has a well-known brand name so they do charge more than other brands but they stay competitive with in the market. However if they did raise their prices exponentially they would lose a lot of customers. w. Placement: xxiii. Crayola has an excellent distribution strategy. They can be found in most all stores. They can be found in big box stores, grocery stores, dollar stores, arts and crafts stores and even some convenient stores. Crayola uses traditional distributors to sale to the retail stores. They do sale to schools, education distributors, office supply retailers and specialty markets. Their final is they use their international division to sale overseas. x. Promotion: xxiv. Crayola has several promotional campaigns they do operate. They have many television ads they run during back to school times. They also have many displays put up during back to school time of year. They also send out press releases whenever they announce a new product or retire an old one. However since Crayola is such a well know brand name they don’t need to do a lot of advertising.

Crayola Marketing Analysis questions:

1. What are the market demographics and psychographics? a. The market demographics are Mothers and their children. They want to target anyone who likes to be creative and make different types of art. However Crayola is more known for targeting children and the people who would be responsible for purchasing art supplies for their children. Crayola uses bright colors and children having fun in their advertising so when children see them it makes them believe they will be having fun with the product and makes them ask their parents to get it for them. They also haven’t changed their box colors in years so it’s very recognizable and give people a feeling of trust in the brand.

2. Crayola is in what state of the PLC? b. They are in the growth stage of the product life cycle because they have competitors but have built a brand that is very well known as better than other brands. They are still growing their sales and product lines. The public is very aware of this company and their products.

3. How can we define their move from crayons to toys? c. Crayola’s move to manufacturing toys would be defined as a strategic move to increase sales. Before Crayola started making toys their sales came from one time of the year and that was back to school time. By offering a new product line that would be sought after year round verses one time a year. This would keeping them from going into the declining phase of the PLC diagram, had they not done this another manufacture could have come along and made the same product cheaper and potentially put them out of business. Since they have built a well-known brand with children the transition to add toys along with their arts and crafts supplies was relatively easy for Crayola. By adding this line this should keep them in the growth stage for a long time because they can keep inventing new products to satisfy the needs of their customers.

4. Does this create a whole new stage for development? d. Yes this does create a new stage for development. This is because now they have to put money into research and design of what types of toy their customers would find attractive and want to purchase. This will put them back in the intro stage of the PLC because now they have to introduce a new product and prove it is as worthy as their arts and crafts supplies. They will need to re-brand themselves as a toy manufacture as well as art supply manufacturer.

5. Why the move from Binney and Smith to Crayola?