Miracle-Gro and the Scotts Company

$CASE$STUDY$ON$SCOTTS$MIRACLE$GRO

                                        $Sagar$Shrestha

                                $International$American$University

                                     $BUS$590: $Business$Strategy

                        $Submitted$to:$Professor$Sushil$Raj$Kumar$Sharma

                                        $August$8,$2015

Background

Established as an individual company Miracle-Gro and The Scotts Company came together and merged forming The Scotts Miracle Gro Company in 1995. It was then located in Marysville, Ohio which made the company one of the largest in the North American lawn and garden industry. The company was considered as the major supplier and marketer of the products for do-it-yourself lawn and garden care which also included products for horticulture also. The net sales of the company reached around 2.7 billion dollars in the fiscal year of 2007.

In 1868, Orlando McLean Scott founded The Scotts Company who was also regarded as the purveyor of seeds that were weed free. There were two diversifications carried out by Scott and they are distribution of horse drawn farm equipment as well as began a distribution channel of farm seed that were through mail-order. The grass seeds for lawn were offered during the year 1907 and the distribution was begun through retail channels in the year 1924 where Turf Builder was introduced in the year 1928 which functioned as the primary fertilizer exclusively designed for grass. Drop spreaders were introduced when he began spreader business in the year 1930 whereas in 1983, broadcast spreaders were introduced. In 1992, Republic Tool and Manufacturing Company were acquired and added competencies in entire value control over spreader manufacturing. Starting from the year 1971, there were changes in the ownership of the company from the Scotts family to ITT and in 1986, when the stock trading started in NASDAQ, Scotts was made a private company by leveraged buy-out for a time.

In the year 1951, Horace Hagedon established Miracle-Gro which had no internal productions like Scotts, where contract manufacturers were appointed for outsourcing all the productions. Miracle-Gro was already a leader in the lawn care chemical industry before the merger with Scotts in the year 1995 and later in the year 2000, Scotts Miracle-Gro products ruled the market as the leader in the major category for which they competed.

SWOT Analysis

Strength

Scotts has a spreader manufacturing plant in Temecula, California. After the acquisition of Republic Tool and Manufacturing Company in the year 1992 from McRoskey family, the production plant was located in Carlsbad, California but due to high cost and efficiencies, the manufacturing plant was moved to Temecula which was considered as one of the most efficient decision. After the merger between Scotts and Miracle Gro, the company has been the leader in the supplier and marketer for do-it-yourself lawn and garden care products.