Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Strategy & Execution
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save?
Steve & Barry's grew rapidly in the mid-2000s, transitioning from a chain of small stores selling inexpensive collegiate-branded merchandise near university campuses into a $1 billion mall-based giant selling a wide variety of low-priced, celebrity-endorsed apparel. While the company had a wide following, elements of its growth strategy-potentially exacerbated by economic conditions-contributed to its quick downfall. By 2008 Steve & Barry's had declared bankruptcy, and various private equity firms were investigating whether some or all of the company should be saved. This requires analyzing the underlying business strategy pursued by Steve & Barry's before and after its growth phase and specifically diagnosing the explanations for its failure.
Authors :: Michael Mazzeo, Ariel Shwayder, Sachin Waikar
Swot Analysis of "Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save?" written by Michael Mazzeo, Ariel Shwayder, Sachin Waikar includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Barry's Steve facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Financial management, Marketing, Sales, Strategy and Strategy & Execution.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? casestudy better are - – increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing energy prices, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, technology disruption, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save?
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Barry's Steve, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Barry's Steve operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Barry's Steve
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Strategy & Execution field.
4. Making a Strategy & Execution topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Barry's Steve
Strengths Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Barry's Steve in Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? Harvard Business Review case study are -
Highly skilled collaborators
– Barry's Steve has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Barry's Steve in the sector have low bargaining power. Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Barry's Steve to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Analytics focus
– Barry's Steve is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Michael Mazzeo, Ariel Shwayder, Sachin Waikar can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Learning organization
- Barry's Steve is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Barry's Steve is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Strategy & Execution industry
– Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Barry's Steve to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Barry's Steve to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Strong track record of project management
– Barry's Steve is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Organizational Resilience of Barry's Steve
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Barry's Steve does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Barry's Steve has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Barry's Steve in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Diverse revenue streams
– Barry's Steve is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Digital Transformation in Strategy & Execution segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Barry's Steve digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Barry's Steve has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Weaknesses Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? are -
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Barry's Steve has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save?, it seems that the employees of Barry's Steve don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
Lack of clear differentiation of Barry's Steve products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Barry's Steve needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Barry's Steve is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication mentioned in marketing section of case study Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? can help to provide better information regarding products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save?, it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Strategy & Execution strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Barry's Steve, firm in the HBR case study Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Michael Mazzeo, Ariel Shwayder, Sachin Waikar suggests that, Barry's Steve is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Barry's Steve 's lucrative customers.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Barry's Steve supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save?, it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Barry's Steve vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Need for greater diversity
– Barry's Steve has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Barry's Steve is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Strategy & Execution segment. Barry's Steve needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Barry's Steve to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Opportunities Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? are -
Buying journey improvements
– Barry's Steve can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Barry's Steve in the consumer business. Now Barry's Steve can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Barry's Steve has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Barry's Steve to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Barry's Steve can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Barry's Steve to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Barry's Steve to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Barry's Steve can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Barry's Steve operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Strategy & Execution sector.
Loyalty marketing
– Barry's Steve has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Barry's Steve to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Barry's Steve in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Strategy & Execution segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Barry's Steve to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Barry's Steve can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save?, to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Barry's Steve can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Barry's Steve can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Strategy & Execution segment.
Threats Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? are -
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Barry's Steve with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Barry's Steve has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Strategy & Execution industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Barry's Steve needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Strategy & Execution sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Barry's Steve high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save?, Barry's Steve may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Strategy & Execution .
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Barry's Steve will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Regulatory challenges
– Barry's Steve needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Strategy & Execution industry regulations.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Barry's Steve in the Strategy & Execution industry. The Strategy & Execution industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Barry's Steve demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Barry's Steve needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Strategy & Execution industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Barry's Steve business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Environmental challenges
– Barry's Steve needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Barry's Steve can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Strategy & Execution industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Barry's Steve can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? .
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Steve & Barry's: To Save or Not To Save? is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Barry's Steve needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.