Marketing

Hines started ECW 20 years back with the limited budget by purchasing the necessary equipment and setting up a small operation in the basement of her home with the help of her husband which later included the help from her children.

She started producing the pieces of dinnerware such as plates and bowls but because of Hines’ ability to create attractive decorative pieces and her strategy of carrying themes throughout her products enabled the customer to collect all the items of a collection and she was able to expand the line to different products such as lamps and even non ceramic decorative products.

She is currently having a forecast demand of 3000 products for country pitcher (CP) as she is seeing growing interest in one of her product lines i.e. CP from some of her primary customers-member store of a national pharmacy chain. And she has been able to come to this conclusion as although she has no agreements with the head office of the pharmacy chain she has been very successful with the new locations she had approached

CP has a wholesale price of $25 with the profits margins of 56% that is the main reason she doesn’t wants to miss the opportunity of this increasing interest in CP but for the production of CP she has to be involved in the manufacturing process as due to her family commitments and commitments to other product lines she is able to give only 8 hours per week for the production of CP which is not enough for the production of 3000 CP.

 She also feels that her time can better utilized at marketing and the production of butter churn lamps that can be sold additionally 2-3 more per week. It has a retail price of $350 retail and with the profit margin of 60%.

So she is now facing a dilemma as what should she do in order to maximize her profit and cash on the increasing interest of CP by the market.