Forest Cabin: Building Resilience During the Pandemic

Shanghai Forest Cabin Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (Forest Cabin) was a skin care product manufacturer and retailer that had focused on developing offline stores. At the beginning of 2020, however, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic stagnated offline sales activities. Half of Forest Cabin’s offline stores closed at that time, and the existing stores had few customers, slowing the offline sales business. Forest Cabin rapidly initiated live streaming sales based on the digital foundation the company had built in its earlier stages. In this way, the company successfully responded to pandemic-related challenges and gained user traffic to realize revenue growth. However, with COVID-19 slowing down, people were resuming offline activities. Forest Cabin’s offline stores had provided a competitive advantage to the company. But the company had been able to leverage online live streaming, bringing explosive growth and enabling the company to survive a crisis. Should Forest Cabin focus on online development or offline development going forward?

This case is suitable for master of business administration and executive courses in general management and strategic management. By studying this case, students can understand organizational resilience, including how to build it and the influencing factors. Digital technology and organizational resilience are crucial for enterprises to cope with various external forces and sustain development. This case allows students to do the following:<ul><li>Understand the definition, connotation dimensions, and possible outcomes of organizational resilience.</li><li>Learn about the influencing factors in building organizational resilience.</li><li>Analyze the process of building organizational resilience.</li></ul>

• Public crisis, organizational resilience
• Digital transformation