Baldwin’s Business Strategy

Baldwin’s Business Strategy

Baldwin concentrated on increasing market share by offering quality products at a competitive price while managing our costs and financing to maximize value. Our sales strategy is to offer low-tech and high-tech products at a competitive price, relative to the market, by investing in marketing and promotions to increase market awareness and accessibility. The research and development (R&D) department goal is to develop products in a short amount of time while focusing on quality, speed and size of the product to appeal to both market segments. R&D is responsible for learning about new technologies and adapting to the changing market. Production is highly focused on managing operating and labor costs while increasing automation and capacity to keep our profit margins maximized. Our projects and new products have been financed with a combination of debt and equity including retained profits, stock issues, short term borrowing and bond issues. The goal of financing is to borrow enough for our short term needs and long-term investments while generating positive cash flow and free cash flow from operations.

Research and Development (R&D) Strategy

Baldwin’s R&D strategy is to offer well-positioned products to both low-tech and high-tech segments in a timely manner. The goal was to develop a new sensor in the first year to appeal to the high-tech segment while repositioning our existing sensor to meet changing customer preferences. In addition, our strategy is to decrease material costs by reducing MTBF while remaining in the segments’ guidelines.

In 2014, the size and performance specifications for our sensor Baker were not changed because the product was positioned in the fine cut circles of both low-tech and high-tech segments. Moreover, it was important for us to have the product ready very early in the year in order to make the most sales possible. MTBF was reduced from 21000 to 19000; while this allowed us to compete in both market segments it also decreased the material cost from $16.34 in 2013 to $14.34 in 2014. Our sensor Baker got the second best customer survey score (20) in the low-tech segment and the third best score (11) in the high-tech segment.

In addition, we have designed our new sensor Bravo to offer to the high-tech segment which was positioned inside the fine cut circle close to the ideal spot of the segment. We chose an MTBF that was in the middle of the range for the segment. Specifications were selected carefully in order to position the sensor properly while having the product ready and on the market for at least 5 months. In 2015, our sensor Bravo was the best positioned and despite being the most highly priced it got a customer survey score of 38, making it #1 among all sensors.

In 2015, since Baker was still meeting customers’ preferences