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Spreadsheet for product W25643.

In March 2021, the wine trade war between China and Australia was escalating, and the competitive landscape in China’s wine market had changed dramatically in just three months. Asa Top, a Chinese import company that had represented certain Australian wineries for over a decade, had to rethink its marketing strategy. The general manager of Asa Top did not know when the recent trade friction between China Australia would end. After the Chinese government introduced its new tariff policy on Australian wine, other participants in the Chinese wine market had quickly reacted to claim Australian wine’s market share in China. How should Asa Top deal with the impact of the duties, reduce the losses, and explore future co-operation with Australia’s winemakers?

NorLand Limited (NorLand) was a construction company based in British Columbia, Canada, with operations in Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec, and the United States. Having grown primarily by acquisition, the company was moving toward an ambitious goal: to achieve CA$500 million in revenues and CA$50 million in net operating income (NOI) by 2025—the 500-50-25 goal. The main questions facing Dave Reynolds, NorLand’s chief executive officer (CEO), and his leadership team revolved around not only expanding the business to achieve this target but doing so sustainably, while giving NorLand’s business units the latitude and freedom that had drawn them to join NorLand in the first place.

On March 1, 2020, when news of the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, it meant an existential threat to the survival of businesses internationally. L’Abode Accommodations, a full-service property management company based in Sydney, Australia that specialized in mid- to high-end luxury vacation homes, was no exception. Virtually overnight, the company experienced an alarming number of contract cancellations. To make matters worse for an industry dependent on vacationers, Australia shut its borders to international travellers. How could L’Abode Accommodations adjust its operating model and strategic and tactical marketing efforts to stop the business from bleeding revenue and profit and to address the staff’s fears of layoffs, as cancellations poured in?

This is the student spreadsheet which accompanies product W26692.

Based in southern Germany, Richard Henkel GmbH was a manufacturing firm focused on its triple-bottom line rather than on its sales turnover. Driven by its sustainability ethos in both its products and its manufacturing processes, it saw itself as a champion of a post-growth, sustainable economy. The case pivots on co-managing director Susanne Henkel’s decision concerning a lucrative sales order: the order would place significant stress on its existing steady-state manufacturing operations and potentially compromise its sustainability performance. In deciding whether to accept the order, Henkel had to confront a pivotal question: How much growth was necessary and sustainable, and how much was too much?

Spotify Technology S.A. (Spotify) was facing significant problems with public relations due to artists’ claims of poor treatment. They had accused Spotify of underpaying artists, obscuring its business practices, and being overly litigious. The objections reached a critical point with a union of creatives, the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW), submitting a petition to Spotify and on March 15, 2021, protesting at its global offices. Spotify management must decide how to navigate this issue.

In September of 2017, CavinKare Private Limited was faced with a tough decision about how to continue its growth in the personal care products industry. The company had been successful in the hair colour market in India, particularly in the southern regions of the country. CavinKare’s success was largely due to their focus on research and development and innovation. The hair colour market showed room for growth, and CavinKare wanted to make sure that they capitalized on its potential. There were three options before the company: stay with their existing products and markets, expand their existing products into new markets, or create innovative new products. To make the decision, CavinKare had to consider many factors, including consumer behaviour, new product development, marketing strategies, and trade partnerships. Only by considering all of these things together would the company have an answer to its question: what was the best option for growth?

Farmer Lee Farms was a family-owned farm 70 kilometres from Johannesburg, South Africa. The farm was founded in 2005 by Jimmy Botha, a sixty-year-old, first-generation Black commercial farmer. From 2005 to 2017, the farm had experienced steady growth and was recognized as a Black business success story in post-apartheid South Africa. During this period, the farm had a clear target market of high-end food packaging houses and food retailers and specialized in the supply of high-quality, high-value fresh produce. However, a severe hailstorm in 2017 destroyed important infrastructure on the farm that was crucial for growing the farm’s temperature-sensitive products. The capital required to repair the infrastructure was not available. As a result, the farm lost key off-take agreements with high-end retail customers and Botha had to change his crops to hardier but lower-value cash crops. In November 2020, the farm urgently needed to re-evaluate its strategy to avoid bankruptcy, for which Botha was considering four options: continue growing cash crops and hope for a market turnaround, apply for a bank loan for funds to repair the damaged infrastructure, access the available government grants to carry out repairs to the infrastructure, or change his farming methods entirely and learn an alternative farming technique known as hydroponics.

A new entrepreneur planning to start a new exports and/or imports business is confronted with the issue of managing and mitigating various risks in international trade. Risks are inherent to any business, be it domestic or international. However, when business becomes international, the dimensions, complexities, and quantum of risks get amplified. This technical note discusses the nuances of various risks faced by the exporters, such as; credit risk, country risk, and currency risk faced by the exporters, popularly known as the three C’s of international trading risks, and the strategies of mitigating those risks. The note also discusses the various risks encountered by the importers, such as; currency risk, supplier risk, and product risk and the methods of managing such risks.

After years of learning from the best bakeries around the world, Polish entrepreneur Monika Walecka returned to her native Poland and, in 2019, opened her artisanal bakery, All in Flour. The bakery was an extension of her values and struck a delicate balance between financial and social objectives. All in Flour was located in one of the most upscale districts of Warsaw and focused on top-quality bread products. It used high-quality, diverse, and expensive ingredients sourced from small, local suppliers, and its bread prices were probably the highest in Warsaw. Walecka was considering whether to pursue any development options. In fact, her preferred option, at present, was to do nothing. She knew that growth was not an obvious choice because it came with risk, costs, and problems. Nevertheless, the decision of whether to change something was becoming the most important challenge of her entrepreneurial career as a baker.

In May 2021, Asahi Group Holdings, Limited (Asahi), a Japanese global beer, spirits, soft drinks, and food company, shifted its focus to non-alcoholic beers. The shift was made after spending US$20 billion to acquire premium beer brands from Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, a Belgian multinational drinks and brewing company.<br><br>The Japanese beer market had been shrinking for decades with Japan’s declining population, and more recently, the market had shrunk further because of restrictions imposed during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In response, domestic beer producers were looking abroad for better market opportunities.<br><br>Asahi needed a strategy to compete against the Belgian beer giant. Considerations included whether to pursue growth in Asahi’s core beer business or diversify in the food industry, how to position a growing portfolio of products to minimize cannibalization, whether to shift focus from the premium to the lower-mass beer market, and how to approach the potential Chinese beer market. Regardless of growth strategy, Asahi needed to deal with a loss in share value, triggered by investors nervous about Asahi’s acquisition spree. To regain investor trust, Asahi needed to manage its financial leverage.

OnlyFans, a paywalled platform primarily known for hosting adult content, had drifted towards sexually explicit content since COVID-19-related lockdowns began in March 2020. However, given pressure from its investors, in August 2021 OnlyFans announced it would ban sexually explicit content from its site later that year. Following the announcement, the company came under fierce criticism from its adult content creators, who maintained that OnlyFans owed its growth to pornography, an industry that had been evolving as technological advancements arose. On August 25, 2021, upon renegotiating with its capital providers, OnlyFans suspended the ban, though irreversible damage had been done. Considering the related information technology (IT) management and ethical issues, what should the chief executive officer of OnlyFans have done when OnlyFans’ different stakeholders pulled the platform in different directions and expressed opposing ethical views? How was an open platform like OnlyFans supposed to judge what was ethical and what was not? Was banning (or not banning) sexually explicit content ethical?

In 2015, HiteVision Tech Co. Ltd., a leading Chinese enterprise in the research and development and manufacturing of interactive educational flat-panel displays (IFPDs), faced a developmental bottleneck. The general manager of the commercial product department turned his attention from the educational to the commercial IFPD market. In early 2018, during the process of entering the commercial IFPD market, the company encountered a series of channel conflicts, which were resolved by adopting a multibrand strategy. However, after achieving initial success in the commercial IFPD market, the company encountered new channel conflicts. In early 2019, the company was facing a distribution problem and an e-business channel issue. The general manager again needed to find a solution.

In 2020, the movie business was turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the closure of theatres. Unable to open their doors, exhibitors had little to no revenue to cover costs, and market analysts predicted that the future for theatre chains, particularly AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC), looked bleak. Then in early 2021, a large number of small retail investors bought shares in AMC. By the July 4th weekend, AMC stock was worth more than 25 times what it had been worth at the beginning of the year. In a post-pandemic environment, could AMC’s chief executive officer, Adam Aron, objectively weigh strategic options to decide what should be the appropriate size and scope of the firm going forward, without being overly influenced by shareholders with shorter time horizons?

In 2016, BlewMinds Consulting LLP was launched as a storytelling consulting start-up with the vision of touching and transforming five billion lives by 2030. One of the two co-founders was already well-known on the LinkedIn social network platform, with more than 600,000 followers. He was also recognized as one of the 25 Top Voices in India by LinkedIn for 2019. The company transformed 725,000 lives directly and 200 million readers indirectly through social media stories, one-on-one training, group coaching sessions, webinars, and speaking engagements, driven mainly by the co-founder’s extensive LinkedIn follower base. However, to realize the company’s vision, several questions remained: How could the co-founders create a community of storytellers within the organization who could effectively establish trust through communication and contribute collectively to the company’s growth? How could they engage a wider audience by effectively leveraging the co-founder’s strategic influencer communication on social media? Should the company continue its bootstrapped business model or should investors be sought?

In May 2021, the chief executive officer of Telkom SA SOC Limited (Telkom) in South Africa was facing a dilemma. Fifth generation (5G) technology was about to be introduced to the country’s communications industry. While Telkom had fared well during the COVID-19 global pandemic, even managing to gain market share from its much larger competitors, the anticipated release of additional coverage spectrum for the new 5G technology was going to put pressure on Telkom’s finances and business model. The chief executive officer, appointed in 2013, had helped transform the company’s business model from a struggling state-owned enterprise with a monopoly and unhappy customers to a thriving business in open competition with complementary strategic business units. However, with continuous evolution in the industry, Telkom was forced to innovate again and possibly reposition its strategic business units.

Anyone who leads an organization has issues that can potentially hamper success, so it’s time to eradicate the stigma surrounding mental health

In April 2020, Rudra Industries and Services Private Ltd., a diesel generator product and service provider in Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in northern India, was facing a dilemma. Diesel generators (DGs) were heavily used by telecommunication companies to provide uninterrupted power supply to their towers, despite frequent power outages. However, consolidation in India’s telecommunication industry had led to stagnation in the company’s core business. To maintain a continuous flow of income, the company was considering a business expansion to leasing diesel generators to clients. The company was asked to prepare a bid proposal for leasing 100 DG sets to a local bank with numerous branches across the state. What factors would influence the pricing estimates in the bid? How should the company finance the purchase of generators that will be leased out to the client? How could the pricing estimate be calculated to ensure the project would be profitable? Should the company even consider entering the leasing sector, considering recent reductions in power outages and increasing diesel prices?

Instructor spreadsheet to accompany product W25654.