Laura Ashley Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Laura Ashley Case Solution

New way of operating Laura Ashley

From the analysis, it was determined that the company was holding the PLC, Purveyor of the landed-gentry look, which was struggling to get its bearings in the world of high-tech retailing and spandex-and-stiletto fashion.

It was expected that the label of the company was synonymous with busy, floral frum piness. Moreover, atthat time the competitors were far behind from the innovation that Laura Ashley had implemented.

Furthermore, it was identified that a 70 years old Bernard Ashley, who co-founded the company with his late wife, repeatedly clashed with management since taking the business public in 1985. Moreover, Laura Ashley's current chief, Ann Iverson, was the recently ap pointedin the succession of CEOs to attempt the turnaround.

Furthermore, compared with modernizing and production, Ms. Iverson addressed that fine tuning the fashion image was the easiest part. It was considered as something that connected the customers to Laura Ashley's brand, and that it had incredible potential.

Last year's line of shift decreased and velvet separated was a sharp break with the past, however the company took a billion-pound write-off for unsold appeal in the first six months of fiscal 1998. Moreover, it is expected that the company had $7.6 million in the first half and the management warned that it might not break-even for the ending fiscal year. Furthermore, the price of Laura Ashley’s shares was on the London Exchange that tumbled 10% on the news and hadyet to recover further.

Furthermore, it was identified that Jim Maxmin, the chief executive in 1991 planned to manage the company again. He wanted to implement the certain ideas that were more beneficial for his personal consumption. Moreover, he had less success streamlining what he called the company's disastrous circulation classification. Furthermore, Maxmin stated that the company required sustained and focused investment, not in just the frills and frippery, but in the basic things that make a business work.

It was determined that Maxmin resigned in short period after the company reported a pretax loss of $51.6 million for fiscal 1995, down from a modest profit in the previous year. Moreover, it was expected that Maxim decided to form an alliance with Federal Express BLS to maintain the deliveries of Laura Ashleylateron, it was the best BLS, while at the same time it was also beneficial for Federal Express.

Advantage of FedEx to Laura Ashley.

Laura Ashley was a global clothing and furnishing retailer based in the United Kingdom. Ithad grown at a very fast rate from opening 231 retail stores in 1986 to 481 stores in 1990. Unfortunately, the company’s profits were not increasing due to the inefficiency of logistics management, and there was an over dependency on in-house manufacturing.

Moreover, it was expected that FedEx provided best delivery services and delivered goods to destinations quickly and efficiently by reducing the lead time, transportation cost and inventory costs.

Significantly, it improved the company's customer service, better informed front-line employees due to the transparency, reduced costs, and improved efficiency in its operations. Moreover, it rebuilt its reputation and relationship with its customers, and became more competitive globally.

Furthermore, the only drawback of this was that the company lost complete control of distribution part of the business, but at the same time, Laura Ashley was growing with the increasing efficiency, which was a small price to pay because the current operations of the company needed some help.

Alliance with FedEx

Currently, the company was very inefficient with the distribution area of the business, and that cost it a lot and that it could be difficult and could take a long time for Laura Ashley to try and re-engineer its processes and form a distribution system that should work. Therefore, instead of trying to invest all that time and the amount involved in recordering and emerging an employed platform, forming an alliance with FedEx and having them take over the function could be the better option for which FedEx was known for its logistics expertise as well as it has one of the best tracking systems in place....................

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