Evine Live Inc (EVLV) SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / MBA Resources
Retail (Catalog & Mail Order)
Strategy / MBA Resources
Introduction to SWOT Analysis
SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix for Evine Live Inc (United States)
Based on various researches at Oak Spring University , Evine Live Inc is operating in a macro-environment that has been destablized by – increasing transportation and logistics costs, increasing commodity prices, there is backlash against globalization, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , geopolitical disruptions, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, there is increasing trade war between United States & China,
banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, wage bills are increasing, etc
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University, we believe that Evine Live Inc can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Evine Live Inc, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Evine Live Inc 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 Evine Live Inc can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning of Evine Live Inc
2. Improving business portfolio management of Evine Live Inc
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in United States
4. Making a Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) sector specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Evine Live Inc
Strengths of Evine Live Inc | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Evine Live Inc are -
Ability to recruit top talent
– Evine Live Inc is one of the leading players in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry in United States. It is in a position to attract the best talent available in United States. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Learning organization
- Evine Live Inc 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 Evine Live Inc is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders at Evine Live Inc emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Evine Live Inc in Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) 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 Evine Live Inc 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.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry
– Evine Live Inc has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Evine Live Inc to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Evine Live Inc to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Evine Live Inc in the Services sector have low bargaining power. Evine Live Inc has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Evine Live Inc to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Evine Live Inc has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry. Secondly the value chain collaborators of Evine Live Inc have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Ability to lead change in Retail (Catalog & Mail Order)
– Evine Live Inc is one of the leading players in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry in United States. Over the years it has not only transformed the business landscape in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry in United States but also across the existing markets. The ability to lead change has enabled Evine Live Inc in – penetrating new markets, reaching out to new customers, and providing different value propositions to different customers in the international markets.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Evine Live Inc 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.
Diverse revenue streams
– Evine Live Inc is present in almost all the verticals within the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry. This has provided Evine Live Inc 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.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Evine Live Inc has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in – Evine Live Inc staying ahead in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Innovation driven organization
– Evine Live Inc is one of the most innovative firm in Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) sector.
Weaknesses of Evine Live Inc | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Evine Live Inc are -
No frontier risks strategy
– From the 10K / annual statement of Evine Live Inc, it seems that company is thinking out the frontier risks that can impact Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry. 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.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, Evine Live Inc has high operating costs in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Evine Live Inc lucrative customers.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Evine Live Inc 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.
Need for greater diversity
– Evine Live Inc 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.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee of Evine Live Inc is just above the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry average. It needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Evine Live Inc has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) 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’ less understanding of Evine Live Inc strategy
– From the outside it seems that the employees of Evine Live Inc 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.
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 Evine Live Inc supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes, Evine Live Inc is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Evine Live Inc vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Evine Live Inc is one of the leading players in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry, it takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry in last five years.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative at Evine Live Inc, in the dynamic environment of Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry it has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Evine Live Inc has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
High dependence on Evine Live Inc ‘s star products
– The top 2 products and services of Evine Live Inc still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Evine Live Inc has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Evine Live Inc Opportunities | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities of Evine Live Inc are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Evine Live Inc is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Evine Live Inc can utilize new technology in the field of Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Evine Live Inc 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.
Loyalty marketing
– Evine Live Inc 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.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions in Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Evine Live Inc in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry. Now Evine Live Inc can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Evine Live Inc 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.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Evine Live Inc 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.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Evine Live Inc 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 Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry.
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 Evine Live Inc 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.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Evine Live Inc has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled Evine Live Inc to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Evine Live Inc to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Evine Live Inc can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Evine Live Inc operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) sector.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Evine Live Inc has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry. This can help Evine Live Inc to build a more holistic ecosystem for Evine Live Inc products in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry by providing – data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Developing new processes and practices
– Evine Live Inc can develop new processes and procedures in Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry using technology such as automation using artificial intelligence, real time transportation and products tracking, 3D modeling for concept development and new products pilot testing etc.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Evine Live Inc can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Threats Evine Live Inc External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats of Evine Live Inc are -
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, Evine Live Inc may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) sector.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Evine Live Inc 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.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Evine Live Inc has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Evine Live Inc needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) 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.
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.
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. Evine Live Inc needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Evine Live Inc 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 Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry and other sectors.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Evine Live Inc is facing in Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, 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.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Evine Live Inc.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Evine Live Inc 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 Evine Live Inc prominent markets.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry to Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry are lowering. It can presents Evine Live Inc with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) sector.
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 Evine Live Inc in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Evine Live Inc can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the Retail (Catalog & Mail Order) industry.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Evine Live Inc Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers at Evine Live Inc 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 Evine Live Inc 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 Evine Live Inc 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 Evine Live Inc 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 Evine Live Inc needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
