Case Study: Montes Calcados

Introduction

Montes Calcados (MC) is privately held female shoe manufacturer, whose history can be traced back to 1970s, when Renato Montes, the father of the president, Vitoria Montes, emigrated from Portugal to Rio de Janeiro. Renato was a skilled shoe craftsman and designer, who felt that South America would offer opportunities for shoes and eventually major into global market (Heskett & Kindley, 2018). In 1972, Renato found work in one of the major footwear industries and got married to Lillian Costa in the same year. Vitoria was born the following year. In 1974, Renato designed a leather Sandal and which received massive positive reviews, and his wife connected him to her cousin and obtained a financial for a startup of Montes Ipanema Sandal (Heskett & Kindley, 2018). Through Lillian, the shoes were placed at fashionable retailers and Montes' company quickly achieved profitability. Vitoria studied at New York University and the Fashion Institute of Technology, and later obtained an MBA from University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. In 1999, she returned to Brazil to work at MC, and through the ranks, she became the company's president in 2012, when her father retired.

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Montes Calcados' Source of Competitive Advantage

MC had experienced a massive growth throughout the years, with the company growing at 3% until 2017. One of the key sources of their competitive advantage is the ability to produce shoes designs that clicked with young women (Heskett & Kindley, 2018). The company has long resonated with young women of ages between 18 and 35, who fancy fashionable footwear across the globe. This market segment enabled them to study their tastes and preferences. Also, the key management team has remained committed to the retailers and all the partners, enabling the company to have the same undeterred zeal to present the Brazilian fashion to the customers. Further, the company has made major partnerships with companies and franchises with the same ambition and drive for quality provision, thereby expanding the reach of the company in global market (Alford & Bebensee, 2010). Montes Calcados also prioritized in marketing communications to ensure that its brand reaches as many customers as possible. Integrated marketing communications have aided in creation of desire for the company's products. The company has allocated about 3% of the budget to drive its marketing programs, using vehicles such as fashion magazines, social media, public relations, as well as celebrity events such as the Emmy Awards (Heskett & Kindley, 2018). Through these elaborate advertisements, the company continues to enlarge its territories and hence gaining competitive advantage.

Challenges at MC

One of the main challenges of the company is that its products primarily portray the Brazilian fashion. Even after expanding to other countries, the company has not designed strategies that encompass the fashion tastes of other areas, which has led the company to experience low sales in countries that may not embrace the Brazilian style (Heskett & Kindley, 2018). Also, the aging population poses a major challenge, as far as market segmentation for the company is concerned. As already pointed out, the company's products focus on women aged between 18 and 35 years, and this poses challenges in targeting other customers, with such debating raising varied reaction from the company circles (Heskett & Kindley, 2018). The company's global position is another challenge for the company; the company needs to be more global in its products and break the shell of being a "Brazilian brand." In order to address these issues, the company needs design products that reflect other fashion tastes of other countries as well and consider expanding its market to all customers, other than just young women.

The Rise and Fall of Blackberry

Brief History

The company, which was launched by Research in Motion (RIM) was laid to foundation in 1999 for the development of smartphones. RIM had been founded by Michael Lazaridis in 1984, at a time when he was an engineering student at the University of Waterloo (Ghosh, 2011). The first product for the company was an electron sign for a water plant, but subsequently developed a film reader for editing films, a fete that put Lazaridis on the global map. The company struggled to develop an email device, but in 1999, RIM launched its first product and launched its shares on NASDAQ (Ghosh, 2011). The company would be a huge success in the next decade after 1999, in which huge milestones in the business would be achieved.

Main Innovative Contribution of RIM

The precursor to the success behind Blackberry as a company was the RIM Interactive Pager 900, which had been introduced in 1996. Although there were devices that had keyboard like the laptop, Blackberry was the first mobile phone which had a QWERTY keyboard (Dubey, Goel & Sahu, 2013). The two-way pager was then equipped with the said keyboard, and which enabled it to send and receive faxes and emails (Dani & Khajuria, 2012). Mobile wireless was possible with phones and PDAs, but the BlackBerry was significantly more useful for emails. The other devices had cumbersome email connections, which required the user to call their provider to connect them to their website, or even dial a special number. However, the BlackBerry was connected to their wireless network.

Global Success of BlackBerry

The success of the company can be traced to its strong focus on innovative wireless solutions for the mobile communication market back in the day. While Palm and other companies which offered email services targeted consumers with PDAs that had access to email accounts, BlackBerry focused on the corporate market initially because it did not see big opportunity in the consumer market segment (Ali Jamali & Md Nor, 2012). BlackBerry managed to penetrate the Wall Street firms and also set up new grounds for smartphones. The company expanded into global market by introducing BlackBerry devices with multimedia features such as a camera. The BlackBerry Pearl series was a success, and with extensive carrier partnerships prompted rapid expansion on the global market.

Decline of BlackBerry

The primary cause of the decline of BlackBerry is competition, especially in the smartphone segment. Many companies advanced the operating systems and included email capabilities in those devices and added more multimedia features as well (Ghosh, 2011). Companies such as Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and even Apple increased competition in the market; whereas Google, which developed android operating system meant that BlackBerry would lose a big market share in the near future, which it did.

Solutions for the Decline

The slowing growth and continued competition meant that the company needed a major strategic and technological leap to stay afloat in the market. In 2011, the company unveiled BBX, a new platform for future BlackBerry smartphones, but the platform was later renamed as blackberry 10 (Ghosh, 2011). Although it was enough, the platform gave the company some competitiveness, but more still needs to be done to increase its market share and compete with the rest.

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