A Brief History of Successories: Questions
A Brief History of Successories
Successories was founded in 1985 in Aurora, Illinois, by Mac Anderson as a catalog featuring motivational and recognition items targeted primarily at businesses. Since then, the company has steadily grown to a multi-faceted brand with over 10 million business and consumer customers. Successories became a public company in 1990. Its first series of retail stores opened in 1991 with the Successories.com website launching in 2000. Late in 2008, TWS Partnership, an investment group that is controlled by brothers Ted and Warren Struhl acquired Successories (“Company History”, 2010).
The Successories Mission states that “Our goal is to provide exclusive, high-quality products and programs and be an authoritative source to help businesses and organizations communicate, drive and reinforce core values, motivate people to superior performance, and recognize individual and group achievements. We do this by being an innovative leader in designing, manufacturing, marketing and distributing such products, always with our customers ' needs in mind. Fanatical customer service is a hallmark of our operating philosophy (“The Successories Mission”, 2010)”.
Discussion Questions:
1. Should Successories’s executive team transform the company from a catalog business to an online business? Explain your reasoning.
I think Successories’s executive team should transform the company from a catalog business to an online business. Before the company was profitable again in 2007, Successories’s strategies were cutting back on the amount of color in catalogs, discontinuing unprofitable product lines, and operating more efficiently. Then the economic recession made the company struggle again. And there were no more options to cut costs. The long-term lease of its office space and the catalog costs which included paper and postage made Successories hard to survive again. Going e-commerce would definitely solve some major problems faced by the company. First of
Successories was founded in 1985 in Aurora, Illinois, by Mac Anderson as a catalog featuring motivational and recognition items targeted primarily at businesses. Since then, the company has steadily grown to a multi-faceted brand with over 10 million business and consumer customers. Successories became a public company in 1990. Its first series of retail stores opened in 1991 with the Successories.com website launching in 2000. Late in 2008, TWS Partnership, an investment group that is controlled by brothers Ted and Warren Struhl acquired Successories (“Company History”, 2010).
The Successories Mission states that “Our goal is to provide exclusive, high-quality products and programs and be an authoritative source to help businesses and organizations communicate, drive and reinforce core values, motivate people to superior performance, and recognize individual and group achievements. We do this by being an innovative leader in designing, manufacturing, marketing and distributing such products, always with our customers ' needs in mind. Fanatical customer service is a hallmark of our operating philosophy (“The Successories Mission”, 2010)”.
Discussion Questions:
1. Should Successories’s executive team transform the company from a catalog business to an online business? Explain your reasoning.
I think Successories’s executive team should transform the company from a catalog business to an online business. Before the company was profitable again in 2007, Successories’s strategies were cutting back on the amount of color in catalogs, discontinuing unprofitable product lines, and operating more efficiently. Then the economic recession made the company struggle again. And there were no more options to cut costs. The long-term lease of its office space and the catalog costs which included paper and postage made Successories hard to survive again. Going e-commerce would definitely solve some major problems faced by the company. First of
References: Scarborough, N. M. (2011). Essentials of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management (6thEd.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall. About Successories: Our History. (2010). Company history. Retrieved from: http://www.successories.com/category/company+info/our+history.do About Successories: Our Mission. (2010). The Successories Mission. Retrieved from: http://www.successories.com/category/company+info/our+mission.do