In recent years, new consumer brands have mushroomed to meet consumers' increasingly diverse and personalized demands. However, some struggled to achieve sustainable, long-term growth as they relied heavily on capital investment, outsourced production, and excessive marketing. This case focuses on Winona, a functional skincare brand for sensitive skin, and its parent company, Botanee. It unveils how Winona achieved product innovation through consistent R&D efforts, built a presence in the niche market of sensitive skin by leveraging multi-touchpoint marketing across various channels, and evolved into a leading skincare brand in the Chinese market. As a result, Winona featured in Tmall's sales top 10 in the cosmetics and skincare category for several consecutive years since 2018, becoming the only Chinese brand maintaining this position. However, Botanee faced several challenges as it sought to grow its business further. With Winona contributing 99% of the company's revenue, how could Botanee expand its brand portfolio and broaden its consumer base? While Winona's flagship product, Anti-Sensitive Moisturizing Tolerance-Extreme Cream, remained its primary revenue driver, how could the brand establish a second "hero product" to sustain its growth in the future? The issue of internal branding also came to the fore as Botanee's business expanded, touchpoints multiplied, and organizational structure grew increasingly complex.
As a gaming company that was neither energy nor emissions-intensive, 37 Interactive Entertainment developed a range of measures to reduce its carbon emissions over several years. These included establishing an industry-leading method for calculating the company's carbon footprint, committing to become carbon neutral, purchasing renewable energy, and developing games with environmental themes. Company executives, including cofounder and Vice Chairman, Zeng Kaitian, were committed to finding more ways to ensure the company lived up to its environmental responsibilities, especially by leveraging its advantages as a gaming company to influence society. Zeng also held discussions with the board's Sustainable Development Working Group on integrating social responsibilities into the company's strategy and day-to-day operations.
The case describes the process of Intel promoting an intrapreneurship program in China. The intrapreneurship platform called Ideas2Realty (later rebranded as GrowthX) was founded in 2015. After five years' development, GrowthX was improved step by step by introducing established entrepreneurship methodologies (e.g., the Lean Startup framework), partnering with an innovation accelerator, and inviting external startups. By the end of 2020, GrowthX had explored more than 400 business ideas, bringing Intel millions of dollars in incremental revenue. Why do companies like Intel need intrapreneurship? What challenges did Intel China overcome during the process? Going forward, for project leader Kapil Kane, several challenges remained. For example, how to leverage internal teams and external startups? How to achieve better synergies between different innovation programs? How to convince managers and employees that the program is of high long-term value and ask for more resources to develop?
Antigal is an Argentinian winery with an integrated business model including vineyards, wine production, and distribution. Antigal is owned by the Cartoni family. Virgilio Cartoni entered Antigal as a minority shareholder in 2007, and in 2016 he and his wife Ana Maria took full control of the winery. Antigal consists of three companies. Virgilio and Ana Maria have four children: Stefano, Francesco, Alessandra, and Antonella. Since 2016, the couple each own 20% of the vehicle ROCKY, parent to two companies of Antigal, and the four children own 15% each. Virgilio and Ana Maria also own 50% each of the vehicle BACO, parent to the third company of Antigal. In mid-2018, Antigal became a multi-generational family-managed firm with Stefano, Alessandra, and Francesco working as company managers. Francesco, Virgilio, and Ana Maria's second-oldest son started working for a Chilean producer and exporter of wines following his graduation from university, and he soon realized that the future of the wine business was in China. Consequently, in 2016 he moved to China to work for the Chilean company there. In 2018 Francesco resigned from the job to start a full-time MBA program and begin to build relationships for his family business. Francesco, along with his brother and sister, has a vision to bring Antigal to the next level. There are many challenges ahead for the company to overcome: How to structure the family business governance? How to expand the business and increase the enterprise value of the firm? How and how much could China contribute to it?
At the end of 2018, Francesco Cartoni was concluding his first MBA term when he decided to start working as an executive assistant for his family company, Antigal Winery (Antigal). Antigal encompassed three companies. Two were based in Mendoza (Argentina): Cepas del Sur S.A., which owned the vineyards, and Botega Antigal S.A., which performed the wine production. The third company, Cork Alliance Inc., was a wine wholesaler and importer/distributor based in Miami, Florida (US), that owned a special license to import alcohol. In past years this company structure allowed Antigal to achieve a wide distribution in the US and gain higher profit margins. However, after Francesco joined the company and decided to expand distribution in China, Antigal's sales started to grow significantly in Asia as well. Francesco wanted Antigal to have an even greater presence in China, but once he joined the company, he wanted first to have a clear idea about the value of Antigal. Francesco and his siblings spent the following months collecting any relevant information, and with the help of his accounting professor, they started to make an accurate company evaluation. To provide a comprehensive view of Antigal, this case study analyzes the company's past performance. By using financial ratios, common size analysis and trend analysis are performed. Then, to evaluate the company value of Antigal, two evaluation methodologies are applied: (i) Multiples and (ii) Discount Cash Flow (DCF). The case study also shows the limits of these two techniques and proposes alternative methods. In evaluating the company, many issues are considered: What is the best way to evaluate Antigal, which encompasses companies located in different countries? What is the best method to account for the high inflation rate in Argentina? How could global economic trends, such as the burst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and wine industry trends, impact Antigal's future growth? Antigal recorded stable sales in the
China's gold jewelry market was for a long time very homogenous: brands all offered very similar products and provided discounts to gain a competitive advantage. For many years, even Chow Tai Fook (hereinafter 'CTF'), an industry leader that boasted superior product design and craftsmanship, suffered from low profit margins and sluggish sales growth. Furthermore, CTF's competitors constantly tried to mimic its pricing and sales strategies to seize market share. It was against this backdrop of fierce competition that CTF launched the HUÃ Collection in September 2017. The new collection targeted the high-end market and was a resounding success, as well as an industry game-changer. However, as the HUÃ Collection gained market share and production scaled up, this gave rise to new challenges: How could CTF disrupt the homogeneous gold jewelry market through brand innovation? How could it maintain HUÃ's brand value while scaling up production? Moreover, how could it respond to an endless stream of imitation products and plagiarism?
Beryl is a leading brand in China's goji berry market that has stayed ahead of the competition quality-wise and is the only one to build a name for itself both offline and online. Beryl made a foray into e-commerce in 2015 and quickly outperformed rivals with low-priced berries. However, its success came at the expense of brand image. In 2018, Beryl repositioned itself by axing lucrative low-price products that brought the company ¥70 million in sales and accounted for 70% of total e-commerce sales. It shifted focus to new goji berry snacks to satisfy the demand for health products among younger generations. In 2020, the Covid-19 outbreak dealt a severe blow to Beryl's offline retail. As a bulwark against the pandemic, Beryl decided to embrace internet retail and make livestream marketing a strategic priority.
Feng Min, Sun Lei, and Li Shangzhen initially established Ruhnn as a Taobao brand called "LiBeilin". With the rapid development and growing integration of social platforms and e-commerce functionality, they partnered with fashion model Zhang Dayi to open an exclusive online private store. Following the store's promising debut, LiBeilin officially renamed itself Ruhnn and adopted an "influencers + incubator + supply chain" operating model. With its self-operated business, Ruhnn looked to optimize its model as the supply chain was too complicated and focus on influencer incubation and operations. It also brought in business partners to pursue monetization. Ruhnn's FY2021Q1 results indicated a dramatic surge in profitability, with the platform business becoming a significant driver of robust growth. In recent years, influencer marketing has exploded with a host of multi-channel networks (MCNs) mushrooming across China. Ruhnn faced a barrage of criticism for relying on Weibo despite declining commercialization. Ruhnn's management team faced several issues. Could influencer incubation be replicated at scale through institutional operations? How should Ruhnn empower influencers and better serve businesses with influencer marketing needs? Could the company's organizational structure keep up with the expanding influencer pool and business size?
The case describes the process of entering the China market undertaken by InMobi, an Indian Internet Company that provides a mobile advertising platform and value-added services for brands. InMobi was intentionally developed as an international venture by its founders. After opening offices in South Africa, Europe, and North America, the board had a long discussion and eventually decided to enter the China market. The case describes how, under the leadership of Jessie Yang, InMobi China successfully adapted to the unique ecosystem of China's internet industry. In 2019 InMobi's China revenue exceeded $100 million for the first time, accounting for over one-quarter of its parent company's global revenue, and next only to the US market. The case ends by noting the expansion of the Beijing office by inviting InMobi technologists from India and also plans for spinning off InMobi China as an independent company. After achieving the aspiring milestone, Yang also faced the business growth challenges. How could she strengthen InMobi's first-mover advantage in the China mobile advertising market and maintain good relations with headquarters to gain autonomy and trust?
In 2008, Zoomlion acquired the Italian company Cifa, a world-leading company in the concrete machinery market. The acquisition bolstered Zoomlion's leadership in this market in China through Cifa's advanced technology. The acquisition also provided Zoomlion fast access to foreign markets, so that it could extend its leadership in the concrete machinery market to Europe, and to emerging markets such as India and Russia. But while much emphasis was given to the noteworthy success of this operation, less has been said so far on the difficulties Cifa managers experienced in their cultural dealings with Zoomlion. Zoomlion's lack of prior international experience and their cultural differences with the Cifa managers led observers to doubt Zoomlion's ability to successfully manage Cifa's operations. What factors were behind the managerial integration? What were the biggest challenges in building a stable working relationship between the two management teams?