Natureview Farm Case Study

Founded in 1989, Natureview Farm, Inc. is a small yogurt manufacturer. The current management team consists of, Barry Landers, CEO, Jim Wagner, CFO, Christine Walker, VP of marketing, Walter Bellini, VP of sales, Jack Gottlieb, VP of operations, and Kelly Riley, assistant marketing director. In 1997, Natureview received equity from a venture capital firm to help fund strategic investments. With proper management and necessary strategic investments, Natureview was able to grow its revenue from less than $100,000 in 1989 to $13M in 1999. The problem the current management team is faced with now, in early 2000, is that the venture capital firm wants to cash out and Natureview needs to find another investor or position itself for acquisition. In order to do so, Natureview needs to increase its annual revenue from $13M to $20M, by the end of 2001. Natureview’s success in the natural foods channel is as a result of its emphasis on natural ingredients and its strong reputation for high quality and great taste. The special process and natural ingredients used by Natureview results in a unique smooth, creamy texture and an average shelf life of 50 days versus its competitors’ products that have a 30 day shelf life. Additional contributors to its success were the expansion of additional flavors and cup sizes, strong relationships with leading natural food retailers, and gorilla marketing tactics. Natureview entered the market with 8-oz. and 32-oz. cup sizes of plain and vanilla yogurt. They now offer 12 flavors in 8-oz. cup size which represents 86% of revenue, and 4 flavors in 32-oz. cup size contributing 14% of revenue. Currently, Natureview’s products are only available in natural food chain stores, and Natureview has strong relationships with the top two, Whole Foods and Wild Oats. Chartered with the difficult task of developing a strategy to achieve $20M in revenues by the end of 2001, the management team developed three options for consideration. The