Top Glaciers Inc. (TG) is a Montreal-based company that emerged in early 2017 from the merger of four Quebec-based ice cream and sorbet companies - Bilboquet, Solo Fruit, Hudson, and Lambert. TG operates in the high-end "artisanal" ice cream and frozen dessert segment. Part A of the case is decisional: it asks students to conduct a business assessment of the company in June 2020 to determine TG's strategy and priorities. Part B is short. It looks at the company's evolution since the end of Part A.
Top Glaciers Inc. (TG) is a Montreal-based company that emerged in early 2017 from the merger of four Quebec-based ice cream and sorbet companies - Bilboquet, Solo Fruit, Hudson, and Lambert. TG operates in the high-end "artisanal" ice cream and frozen dessert segment. Part A of the case is decisional: it asks students to conduct a business assessment of the company in June 2020 to determine TG's strategy and priorities. Part B is short. It looks at the company's evolution since the end of Part A.
Presented in the form of a comic book, this two-part case follows the efforts (or lack thereof) of Richard, the Quebec regional manager of Frippe, a cross-Canada chain of fashion boutiques, to implement a new performance indicator. Four years earlier, Mary, the founder's daughter, had taken over the reins of the company and repatriated production to Canada. Her next goal was to improve the customer experience with the help of a new performance indicator: the conversion rate. Richard was not fully on board with the idea and paid little attention to its implementation, but, at the end of the fiscal year, he had to submit a progress report to Mary.
In 2011, Samuel Maruta and Vincent Mourou, two Frenchmen living in Vietnam, founded Marou to produce fine chocolate from bean to bar. Just seven years later, Marou had opened two shops in Vietnam and was exporting its chocolate to twenty countries, including the United States, France, Sweden, Japan, and South Korea. The company's brand and business model were deeply rooted in its commitment to using only locally grown cacao beans: Marou had forged close ties with small Vietnamese farmers to create a reliable supply of high-quality beans, vital to the production of exquisite chocolate. While highlighting the values and vision of the company's founders (taste, local purchasing, fair and sustainable trade, prudent and organic growth), the case outlines the company's efforts to secure its supply of cacao beans to ensure the high quality of the chocolate it produced. The case also describes the company's distribution and sales strategies both domestically and internationally. The winner of several international awards and lauded by the New York Times in March 2016 as producing "the best chocolate you've never tasted," Marou seemed to be well positioned in the high-end "bean to bar" chocolate niche.