SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Ever Shine Textile (Indonesia)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Ever Shine Textile is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – talent flight as more people leaving formal jobs, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , there is backlash against globalization,
increasing energy prices, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Ever Shine Textile
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Ever Shine Textile can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Ever Shine Textile, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Ever Shine Textile 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 Ever Shine Textile can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Ever Shine Textile
2. Improving business portfolio management of Ever Shine Textile
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Indonesia
4. Making a Apparel/Accessories sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Ever Shine Textile
Strengths of Ever Shine Textile | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Ever Shine Textile are -
Training and development
– Ever Shine Textile has one of the best training and development program in Consumer Cyclical industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
High brand equity
– Ever Shine Textile has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Ever Shine Textile to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Ability to lead change in Apparel/Accessories
– Ever Shine Textile is one of the leading players in the Apparel/Accessories industry in Indonesia. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Apparel/Accessories industry in Indonesia but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Ever Shine Textile in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy of Ever Shine Textile comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the Apparel/Accessories 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Apparel/Accessories industry
– Ever Shine Textile has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Ever Shine Textile to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Apparel/Accessories industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Ever Shine Textile to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Learning organization
- Ever Shine Textile 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 Ever Shine Textile is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Ever Shine Textile emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Ever Shine Textile in Apparel/Accessories industry is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Ever Shine Textile are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Ever Shine Textile has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Ever Shine Textile has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Ever Shine Textile has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Ever Shine Textile staying ahead in the Apparel/Accessories industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Ever Shine Textile has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Apparel/Accessories industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Ever Shine Textile have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Ever Shine Textile in the Consumer Cyclical sector have low bargaining power. Ever Shine Textile has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Ever Shine Textile to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Weaknesses of Ever Shine Textile | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Ever Shine Textile are -
Need for greater diversity
– Ever Shine Textile 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.
Slow to harness new channels of communication
– Even though competitors are using new communication channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, and Snap, Ever Shine Textile is slow explore the new channels of communication. These new channels of communication can help Ever Shine Textile to provide better information regarding Apparel/Accessories products and services. It can also build an online community to further reach out to potential customers.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Ever Shine Textile is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Apparel/Accessories industry, but Ever Shine Textile needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Ever Shine Textile to focus more on services in the Apparel/Accessories industry rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Aligning sales with marketing
– From the outside it seems that Ever Shine Textile needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the Apparel/Accessories industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department at Ever Shine Textile can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Ever Shine Textile is planning to shift buying processes online.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Ever Shine Textile, in the dynamic environment of Apparel/Accessories industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Ever Shine Textile has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Indonesia, Ever Shine Textile needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Lack of clear differentiation of Ever Shine Textile products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Ever Shine Textile needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Ever Shine Textile has some of the most successful models in the Apparel/Accessories industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. Ever Shine Textile should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Ever Shine Textile is one of the leading players in the Apparel/Accessories industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Apparel/Accessories industry in last five years.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Ever Shine Textile has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the Apparel/Accessories industry over the last five years. Ever Shine Textile even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Ever Shine Textile has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Ever Shine Textile Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Ever Shine Textile are -
Buying journey improvements
– Ever Shine Textile can improve the customer journey of consumers in the Apparel/Accessories industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. It 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.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Ever Shine Textile has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Apparel/Accessories industry. This can help Ever Shine Textile to build a more holistic ecosystem for Ever Shine Textile products in the Apparel/Accessories industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Ever Shine Textile 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 Ever Shine Textile to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– consumer behavior has changed in the Apparel/Accessories industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Ever Shine Textile can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Ever Shine Textile can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Ever Shine Textile can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Ever Shine Textile 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.
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 Ever Shine Textile 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.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Ever Shine Textile can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Ever Shine Textile operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Apparel/Accessories sector.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Apparel/Accessories industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Ever Shine Textile in the Apparel/Accessories industry. Now Ever Shine Textile can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Loyalty marketing
– Ever Shine Textile 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.
Finding new ways to collaborate
– Covid-19 has not only transformed business models of companies in Apparel/Accessories industry, but it has also influenced the consumer preferences. Ever Shine Textile can tie-up with other value chain partners to explore new opportunities regarding meeting customer demands and building a rewarding and engaging relationship.
Manufacturing automation
– Ever Shine Textile can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Apparel/Accessories sector. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Ever Shine Textile has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Apparel/Accessories sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Ever Shine Textile to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Ever Shine Textile to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Threats Ever Shine Textile External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Ever Shine Textile are -
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Ever Shine Textile has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Apparel/Accessories industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Ever Shine Textile needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Apparel/Accessories 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.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Apparel/Accessories industry will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Ever Shine Textile can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
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. Ever Shine Textile needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Apparel/Accessories industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
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. Ever Shine Textile 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.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Ever Shine Textile in the Apparel/Accessories sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Apparel/Accessories industry are lowering. It can presents Ever Shine Textile with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Apparel/Accessories sector.
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.
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Ever Shine Textile 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 Apparel/Accessories industry and other sectors.
Regulatory challenges
– Ever Shine Textile 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 Apparel/Accessories industry regulations.
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Ever Shine Textile in Apparel/Accessories industry. The Apparel/Accessories 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.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Ever Shine Textile 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.
Increasing wage structure of Ever Shine Textile
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Ever Shine Textile.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Ever Shine Textile Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Ever Shine Textile 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 Ever Shine Textile 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 Ever Shine Textile 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 Ever Shine Textile 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 Ever Shine Textile needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.