Strengths:
- Reputation/l High quality wooden sticks
- Composite sticks
- Canadian
- Strong relationship with supplier:
- Learning by partner
- Quick turn around
- Long relationship
- Employee loyalty (Could also be a weakness)
Weaknesses:
- Lack of endorsements
- Limited use in NHL
- Costly turnaround
- Decreasing sales/margin
- Limited brand recognition outside Canada
- No product personalization
- Reputation not good with outsourcing
Competitive Advantage:?
VRIN:
R: Technology
- Shorter replacement cycles
Social/Cultural
– Culture differences & tech distance
Political/Legal
- Recall due to health reasons (Threat)
Economic
- Increasing labor and material costs (Threat)
- Currency impact (Threat)
- Narrowing wage gap
Global
- Eastern Europe/Russia
- China perception
Demographic
- Less players nationally
- 1-2% decline in players
- Increase in rec league
Bargaining power of buyer
- Retailer power increasing
- Switching costs low
- Medium to high
Bargaining power of supplier
- Differentiated product?
- Concentrated industry
Threat of new entrants
- Lower end? Due to economies of scale, strong bands in industry,
Threat of product substitutes (Other sports)
- Loyalty but perhaps?
Inter-firm rivalry
- Smaller # of competitors
- Moderate to high
- Exit costs?
- Strategic stakes high?
– Fixed costs low?
Competitors
- Easton
- Higher end
- Strongest with link
- Diversified
- Bauer
- Higher end
- Largest market share
- Reebok
- 1st to build composite
- Russian
- Reputable for performance and quality
Vs Sherwood
- Lower end
- Less efficient
- Lower price
- Not a good combination for revenue
Cooperative Strategy with suppliers
- Non equity alliance
- Benefits
- specialization
- efficiency
- quality
- Risks
- Hold up
- opportunism
- Learning arbitrage
Recommendations
- Bring mfg back – X
- Too expensive
- Others already are made in china
- Leave as is – X
- Put up for sale – Yes
- Outsource closer to Canada
- R&D insource – X
- Might be too hard to do?
- Restructure partnership
- Consider entering Russian market
