Case Study

SHIMANO’s Growth Strategy

Overall, Shimano did a lot of challenges and they use strategy and overcome each challenges then they can success in the bicycle market. They know their core strength which is technology for innovative products from the bicycle parts, and they can deal with customer needs directly by making products based on customer demands. Finally they can transfer their technology strength to other product lines in order to secure profit and produce additional valued products.

Internal Analysis

Shimano has high quality bicycle parts, and they sell with premium price without discount. Since Shimano guarantee the replacement for defective parts, they shows their confidence of quality.

Shimano knows their strong point and instead of offer discount, they offer service such as replacement or produce new product in order to deal with customer needs. They invest their core technology, for example they establish plant for cold forging process. But it can reduce cost around 30%, then they can produce high quality product with lower price.

Shimano focus on research and development, and also their marketing especially for global was aggressive, so this combination is their strong point. They can shift global market quickly after they notices that local market dropped, and they invest a lot for new technology and opening offices worldwide that also their strong point.

SWOT Analysis of Shimano

Strengths

Strong R&D and technology with factory and skilled worker.

Customer Focus service.

Quick decision making with family business management

Dominate market in Japan

Lots of technical capabilities with lots of university graduates and investment in production plant

The plant reduce needed processes and cut production cost around 30%

Direct sales to bicycle assemblers and retailers and get customer’s feedback easily.

Weakness

No strong connection with trading company in US, EU, CN.

Opportunities

High demand of Mountain Bike market overseas such as US.

Getting attention for high quality parts in overseas market such as US.

Threats

Demand fluctuation.

Competitive in EU market such as Campagnolo.