Baby BiO
“Now I’m not sure what to do,” said Tony Mandino
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project leader for the Baby BiO product line. “I expected the four of you to reach fairly similar conclusions, but you’ve each brought a totally different recommendation. And we have three days to decide what to present to senior management.”
BiO is a fashion-forward retailer of clothing designed for young people aged 12-24. BiO’s stores
are located principally in suburban shopping malls and upscale urban retail areas, and compete head-to-head with retailers such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, American Eagle, Aeropostale, and Gap/Old Navy. BiO has differentiated itself from other clothing retailers targeting this age group by selling exclusively “green” clothing: the materials from which BiO’s
clothes are made come exclusively from organic or recycled sources. BiO employs a team of designers, who closely follow trends among teenagers, and whose designs are manufactured offshore for sale in their proprietary retail stores. BiO updates their product offerings at least monthly, to respond to seasonal changes and to keep their product line fresh. The BiO label is coveted by young people, which allows BiO to charge prices and earn margins higher than normal for clothing retailers. Because inventory turns obsolete very quickly, BiO had also opened outlet stores to sell off items which had been rotated out of their regular stores. BiO had started an online shop several years before, but had not invested heavily in developing it.
Recently, senior management of BiO had decided to explore adding a line of baby clothes to their product line, to be called Baby BiO. Management had hoped to apply their design team and
highly regarded style to the market for baby clothes. They also believed that the green appeal of their clothing would appeal to mothers, who seemed to want the most natural clothing for their babies. Management also hoped that they could sell to their current target market, women in their teens and twenties, who also bore over 50% of babies in the U.S. They had assigned a rising star in the company, Tony Mandino, to head up a team of marketers to recommend how the line would be distributed. Mandino had chosen four of the company’s most innovative marketing thinkers and asked each one to work independently to recommend a distribution strategy, hoping to avoid group-think and maximize creativity. His marketing team consisted of Susan Murphy, Michael Jensen, Jessica Martinez, and Henry Chan, all of whom had substantial experience with marketing BiO’s
product lines. Murphy and Chan had begun their careers in merchandising at major department store chains, while Jensen and Martinez had been hired from online marketing companies.
Tony had scheduled an all-day review of the recommendations of the four marketing executives, with the hope that they could combine the best thinking of all four into a unified marketing plan for presentation to senior management. If the senior managers approved of their direction, the group would then begin to flesh out the details of the plan. But Tony had been very surprised that the group had come back with such divergent thoughts.
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The events, organizations, and people in this case study are fictitious (other than competitors), and are intended for instructional purposes only, rather than to illustrate effective or ineffective management.
© 2008, 2012 Garnett H. Slatton
