...Investment Decisions Summary of Facts Friendly Cards, Inc. (first named Beaumont Greeting Card Co.) is a greeting card company started in 1978, in New York City by Wendy Beaumont. The company has experienced rapid growth, acquiring like companies and expanding its market base. The company became public through a stock offering at $3 per share. From an operational viewpoint, Friendly cards performed all production at its plant in Reading, Connecticut. Company sales include nearly 30% from Christmas sales, 25% from Valentines sales and about 45% from average every day and spring holiday sales. The company reports low returns expense, as packages sold to stores were not returnable. Overall operations are well monitored under a tiered organizational structure. Wendy Beaumont, the company’s president is looking to further expand and has asked the advice of friend and financial consultant, Amy McConville to review a potential acquisition or partnership. The prospects will elevate some of the president’s concerns for financing. In her own words, Ms. Beaumont expressed that the cost of financing growth right now was high and Friendly Card's projects 20% growth over the next year and even more in subsequent years. Further stating, the company had never been without financing problems and had always been capital intensive relying on strong relations with its banks and suppliers in realizing success. Still, Friendly’s bankers have begun to feel uneasy regarding the company’s...
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...Final Case: Friendly Cards, Inc. FINAN 4210 Lutz Jonathan Matsen 05/01/2013 Problem Identification Wendy Beaumont, president of Friendly Cards, is currently faced with 3 time sensitive issues that need to me dealt with immediately. As a relatively small company in the fiercely competitive greeting card industry, Ms. Beaumont must make some quick yet intelligent decisions to ensure the continued success of her company. To be more specific, she must decide upon: The investment in equipment to enable the company to make rather than buy their own envelopes The acquisition of Creative Designs Inc., a small Midwestern manufacturer of studio cards The possibility of going to the market to raise additional equity capital in order to relieve pressure on its financial position Identification of Relevant Facts Friendly’s position in the industry As of early 1988, the main issues facing the greeting card industry were: Continued industry consolidation (a decline of 15% per decade since 1954) Cyclical revenues The presence of high fixed costs Threat of Industry Consolidation Since its inception in 1978, Friendly Cards reacted to the looming threat of industry consolidation by rapidly expanding internally and through various acquisitions. These acquisitions allowed Friendly to access new markets and demographics that would have been previously unavailable to them. For example, through their acquisition of a California firm, the company gained West...
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...Final Case: Friendly Cards, Inc. FINAN 4210 Lutz Jonathan Matsen 05/01/2013 Problem Identification Wendy Beaumont, president of Friendly Cards, is currently faced with 3 time sensitive issues that need to me dealt with immediately. As a relatively small company in the fiercely competitive greeting card industry, Ms. Beaumont must make some quick yet intelligent decisions to ensure the continued success of her company. To be more specific, she must decide upon: The investment in equipment to enable the company to make rather than buy their own envelopes The acquisition of Creative Designs Inc., a small Midwestern manufacturer of studio cards The possibility of going to the market to raise additional equity capital in order to relieve pressure on its financial position Identification of Relevant Facts Friendly’s position in the industry As of early 1988, the main issues facing the greeting card industry were: Continued industry consolidation (a decline of 15% per decade since 1954) Cyclical revenues The presence of high fixed costs Threat of Industry Consolidation Since its inception in 1978, Friendly Cards reacted to the looming threat of industry consolidation by rapidly expanding internally and through various acquisitions. These acquisitions allowed Friendly to access new markets and demographics that would have been previously unavailable...
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...com/yokohama-corp-ltd-a-22201) American Greetings Harvard Case Solution & Analysis AN INDUSTRY IN DECLINE Greeting card industry was faced massive changes as it had attained maturity and was now in decline. Overall greeting card sales had been contracting in the U.S. for some years and negative growth was expected in the next five years to 2015 (Exhibit 4). Hallmark was the largest card company in the U.S. that was privately owned by the Hall family with $4 billion of revenues. The organization had expanded its operations in more than hundred nations and thus it was well-diversified geographically. Overall, the U.S. card industry was contracting with 9% reduction in last six years and the trend was expected to continue with a minimum of 4% decline over next 4 years and 16% in a worst case scenario. Major cause and diver of this decline in demand was changing social interaction norms and advent of alternative forms of communications through social networking and digital imaging. Increase in use of these alternatives by the populace to express their love and keep in touch with their close ones was reducing the need to send paper based greeting cards. As a result, greeting card companies were increasingly moving to electronic card distribution through internet websites but the declining trend did not change much. Some companies were diversifying their business away from pure greeting card business to other related product categories. In this regard AG was trying to expand its sales through discount...
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...Apple, Inc. The product in particular that has created my romance with this company would be the IPhone. I have been using the IPhone since the first day it arrived on June 29, 2007 and I have been a loyal consumer up to my recent purchase of the IPhone 6 Plus, last month. Apple, Inc. has over $100 billion in sales and increased in sales every year consistently since its launch. I am committed to the quality, innovation, design, and simplicity that Apple, Inc. has provided to me consistently over the last 7 years. Apple, Inc. starts with a commitment to producing the very best product or service that you can imagine. This promise started when the late Steve Jobs took the CEO position at Apple, Inc. and created a marketing blitz with the launch of the IPhone, IPod, and IPad. On January 9, 2007 Steve Jobs delivered the most incredible keynote speech of his life and quite possibly the best in the history of consumer electronics (imore.com, 2014). Steve Jobs said,” That he would be introducing a wide screen IPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet device.” It was not going to be three separate products but one innovative product the IPhone. The world’s most successful brands don’t become (or remain) the world’s most successful brands without deep dedication to their customer’s needs. Apple’s customer service is legendary. Spend five minutes in any one of their retail stores and you’ll experience it for yourself: * Friendly, knowledgeable...
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...Asus From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For the Arts & Science Undergraduate Society, see Queen's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (trading as Asus) | | Type | Public | Traded as | LSE: ASKD, TWSE: 2357 | Industry | Computer hardware Electronics | Founded | 2 April 1989 | Founder(s) | T.H. Tung Ted Hsu Wayne Hsieh M.T. Liao | Headquarters | Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan | Area served | Worldwide | Key people | Jonney Shih (Chairman) Jerry Shen (CEO) | Products | Desktops, laptops, netbooks, mobile phones, networking equipment, monitors, motherboards, graphics cards, optical storage, multimedia products, servers, workstations | Revenue | US$14.73 billion (2011)[1] | Profit | US$565.2 million (2011)[1] | Employees | 18,850 (2011)[1] | Website | Asus.com | Asus | Traditional Chinese | 華碩電腦股份有限公司 | Literal meaning | ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (Great Splendid Computer Corporation) | [show]Transcriptions | | ASUSTeK Computer Inc., trading as Asus (/ˈeɪsuːs/[2]), is a Taiwanese multinational computer hardware and electronics company headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. Its products include desktops, laptops, mobile phones, monitors, motherboards, servers, tablet PCs and video cards. The company's slogan is: "Inspiring Innovation. Persistent Perfection."[3] Asus is the world's fifth-largest PC vendor by 2012 unit sales (after HP, Lenovo, Dell and Acer).[4] Asus appears in BusinessWeek’s...
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...| <University> | | | Apple operation strategy | | | | by | | | | <Name> | | | | <Date> | | | | <Lecturer’s Course Number> | | Nature, structure, products types and factors affecting the company Apple is multinational company that deals in manufacture of consumer products such as PC, phone and computer software’s, phones and digital media distributors. The company was started by Steve Jobs and Woznaik, currently it is the leading company in the technology industry. Job shares are 10%. The company went public in 1980 with shares price being 22 dollars and was split unto four times and adjusted IPO share was 0.39 dollars and currently goes for 94.58 dollars. Apple Apple is of the largest multinational company in America that manufactures and sells computers, portable music players, mobile phones, Softwares and applications and other media communication devices. It has a well-established market segment, and some of its products are the Apple TV, operating system (OS X and IOS), iPod and iPhone, and other products. The products produced by Apple unlike other companies dealing with similar products they are known for quality, uniqueness and they are associated with a class in the community. These characteristics have made the products to be outstanding in the market and hence they are preferred by many customers. Apple is one of the outstanding and most looked for after in the market by item fashioners who like quality. The Apple Company...
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...advertisement are not adopted instead of the reader service cards. - Yes, The study conducted by Penton media proves that due to information technology methods that were virtually non-existent in 1992 the e reader cards have displayed a lack of efficiency in recent years. The study backs this up by estimating that within the next 5 years newer methods of communication will hold a majority share of the market with at least 72.2 percent of people expected to visit an advertising website. 2 Management Question: Are the reader service cards still an efficient method for generating advertisement revenues, or have they been replaced by more efficient information technology platforms? -Yes, The reader cards remain an efficient method of generating revenue, while they seem to be slowly losing ground to more information technology platforms like the Internet, email, or fax on demand, they remain producing revenue for the company by generating some advertisement profit. 3 Research Question: Is Penton media reader card service generating enough advertising revenue to remain competitive? Could information technology friendly methods be used to enhance Penton Medias advertising revenue instead of the reader service cards? Should Penton Media change the stage by which they generate advertising revenue? -No, Penton media does not seem to be generating enough advertising revenue just from the reader card service to remain competitive. While the research does...
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...possibilities of manipulations and malpractice • Enables centralized control for monitoring and auditing • Ensures accounting of the tickets sold across all railway zones • Sustains growth in passengers without any growth in staff • Simplifies changes in fare structure, destination and other database updates Indian Railways (IR), the largest rail network in Asia and the world’s second largest under one management, spanning over 6000 stations, carries 17 million passengers every day. Only a million passengers travel with reserved seat tickets, and the remaining 16 million passengers travel each day without a confirmed seat. While reserved ticketing technology is enabled, unreserved ticketing was done primitively using printed cards. Generating over 49% of its earnings, Indian Railways needed a solution to centralize the purchase and management of unreserved tickets. The Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS), a one-of-a-kind modern system, was developed and implemented by CRIS for Indian Railways. UTS is a state-of-the-art computerized unreserved ticketing mechanism providing an improved customer ticketing experience and seamless process. This implementation has helped increase operational efficiency and has also enhanced customer service tremendously....
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...Bank of America: Analyzing Corporate Citizenship In the words of Thomas Friedman, “If you don't visit the bad neighborhoods, the bad neighborhoods are going to visit you.” With “bad neighborhoods” symbolizing customers, this portrays a direct consequence of what can happen if a company does not take into account the impacts of its business decisions. As society progresses through the 21st century, it is clear that the people along with the government are beginning to demand more from companies. Quality products and services are still highly regarded; however, becoming a good corporate citizen is turning out to be an important part of a company’s reputation. Good corporate citizenship is when companies look beyond business goals and take in consideration the effects of their business decisions. Giving back to the community is also something businesses do, however, is not part of good corporate citizenship. This is true because financially providing to a local community has no correlation to business as it is simply a way for businesses to advertise and market their product. Therefore, actions such as emphasizing an environmental program, using methods that respect social and cultural values, or providing employees with special benefits such as a company car or expense account illustrate examples of good corporate citizenship. Making sure stockholders, shareholders, and local residents are respectfully treated is also important. These actions constitute good corporate citizenship...
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...1. Discuss how you will facilitate customer payment using e-commerce solutions (e.g., how the transaction will take place, including the tools customers will use). According to Wikipedia, an e-commerce payment system facilitates the acceptance of electronic payment for online transactions. Also known as a sample of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), e-commerce payment systems have become increasingly popular due to the widespread use of the internet-based shopping and banking. Though e-commerce has been around since the 90s, it has gain popularity and necessity due to well know players like eBay, Amazon, Yahoo etc. The sales revenue of these companies shown in their annual reports are without doubt, one of the biggest factors why Ecommerce is important in the commercial market nowadays. Ω9 aims to make customer experience pleasant by giving its customers (both local and international) various option plans taking into consideration feasibility and security. First and foremost, Ω9 plans to make it checkout page easily accessible taking into consideration the speed factor and multiple payment options. Ω9 has the customer satisfaction in mind on whatever design it want to create on its new website. So the staff working on the website creation have been told to put on the ‘customer hat’ when working on the new website project. Ω9 plans to create the ‘view cart’ link on every page so that the customer can click on it and review the orders that they have placed begin...
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...Implementation, Strategic Controls, and Contingency Plans Apple Inc. STR / 581 March 3, 2014 Professor Wallace Introduction Apple Inc. is a leading global retailer of computers, tablets, cell phones, and other entertainment items. Apple needs new growth methods, product development and be the leader in the mobile market. The implementation plan below will identify the course of action best suited for the corporation along with the implementation process, assessed risks and financial projections that will be used as the basis for moving the business forward. Implementation plan Apple Inc. is currently in a transition period, after the death of Steve Jobs, and seeking methods that will allow the company to regain market share. This implementation is primarily concerned with how to diversify the product offerings, regain customer loyalty and be the leader in the mobile market. An implementation plan is a “detailed listing of activities, costs, expected difficulties, and schedules that are required to achieve the objectives of the strategic plans” ("Implementation Plan," 2014). The plan addresses the following areas of concern: short-term objectives, initiate specific functional tactics, outsource nonessential functions and design an effective reward. Objective: To expand sales to customers who do not yet own Apple’s products. To produce hassle free products for the enjoyment for customers. To become the leader in the mobile market. Strategy: Expanding the company’s...
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...12 Post Street Houston Texas 77000 (713) 555-9781 September 18, 2012 M-Global, Inc. 12 Post Street Houston TX 79224 ATTENTION: Mr. Wilkinson, CEO INDIA STUDY HCC 200 COLLEGE DRIVE WELDON, NC 27890 Introductory Summary You recently asked me to investigate India for the possibility of opening a branch overseas. I have researched India and came to the conclusion that it would be a great location to open a branch of the M-Global Corporation. There are many reasons why outsourcing to India is good for our business. This report presents the reasoning behind my decision. Economy Since the early 90’s India has opened its economy, and allows foreign investment in most industries. Over the last 25 years the Indian economy has had an annual 6% GDP growth. This is only second behind China. Starting as one of the least developed countries, India has emerged as a global player in many industries. India has no barriers to the entry of foreigners, and it is easy to get a visa to enter the country. However, due to historical enmity, entry from Pakistan is monitored, and can create hassles for a western traveler. Beliefs Most Indians enjoy good conversation. They sometimes ask questions which can be seen as too personal and intrusive. However, most of the time they are just trying to be friendly. Indians seldom express their disagreement in a direct manner. Open disagreement can be seen as hostile or aggressive. Indians are open to just about any topics...
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...time and one of the southeast’s largest independent retailers, and is still owned and operated by Gary Houser (Houser Shoes, 2007). In 2000, Houser and his daughter Beth Houser created a shared vision for another chain of stores named GB Shoe Warehouse, which is also one of the southeast's largest shoe stores. Houser has a total of 150 people employees and embraces the strategy of making stakeholders feel special and realizes that its staff that is the backbone of its existence and people have faces and names not just numbers. Social Network Building the first step to building a social network is identifying those on whom the project depends for success (Gray & Larson, 2006). And that's why employees at all the Houser Shoes stores are friendly and welcoming. Houser has a managing project reward system that assigns the leadership team the responsibility of managing the reward system that encourages stakeholder’s performance and extra efforts (Gray & Larson, 2006). The retail fashion industry is con-steadily changing, Houser wants to maintain its reputation in providing all brand names at prices up to 75% off regular department store prices(Houser Shoes, 2007). Houser’s concept is to provide quality shoes to his customers during many years of expansion. Houser has a total of 16 retail stores is located throughout Tennessee, West Virginia and the Carolinas (Houser Shoes, 2007). Houser stores are facing...
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...Title |Understanding Effective Money Management | | |Assessment A, Part 1: Creating a Personal Financial Statement - Assests | |Drag your assets from the notebook to the screen. | | | |Car - Bluebook value $1250.00 | | | |Cash - $378.00 | | | |Savings account - $826.00 | | | |Assessment A, Part 2: Creating a Personal Financial Statement - Debts | |Drag your debts from the notebook to the screen. | | ...
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