Gabriel: Case study

Résumé du document

As one of the Europe's leading suppliers of furniture fabrics, Gabriel A/S has more than 160 years of experience. Having 63 employees they reached DKK 242.6 million for 2010/11 and 91% of production exported. The business areas that they are trying to focus on are Contract (textiles for business furniture), Home (furniture for domestic use) and Transport.
The situation on the market shows that the demand for contract furniture is decreasing, and Gabriel is on the opinion, that this will have a huge impact on the company growth and the way they will try to overcome is by delivering future earnings through new acquisition.

Scope:
Taking into consideration that "Gabriel "is a worldwide company we will concentrate most of our analysis on "Gabriel China" as we found, that there is a potential for new partnerships. We decided not to concentrate on the segment of Lithuania, as 91% of customers are from Europe and potential is seen in Asia.

Theories and models:
We started our report by identifying the corporate mission and vision , that will lead us to the main objectives of the company. Using the supply network model, where the focal firm is in the middle of the chain and upstream and downstream activities control the information and material flow. Assessing the market and industry factors are derived from the PEST and Porter five forces, giving an overview of the obstacles that can drive a change in the supply chain and how Gabriel should react accordingly.

Extraits

[...] Company's characteristics As one of the Europe's leading suppliers of furniture fabrics, Gabriel A/S has more than 160 years of experience. Having 63 employees they reached DKK 242.6 million for 2010/11 and 91% of production exported. The business areas that they are trying to focus on are Contract (textiles for business furniture), Home (furniture for domestic use) and Transport. The situation on the market shows that the demand for contract furniture is decreasing, and Gabriel is on the opinion, that this will have a huge impact on the company growth and the way they will try to overcome is by delivering future earnings through new acquisition. [...]

[...] Market challange deriving from segmentation- what are the changes in the strategy of the company in addition to the needs of the segment. Segmentation- determing different target groups in order to make a general strategic decisions. Market factors- we will concentrate our analysis on political, economic, social, environmental , technological issues , that force Gabriel for seeking new acquisitions. Supply chain-a network between companies, producing, handling and distributing a final product to the end consumer. And it controls the quality of the informtaion flow between the different chains.[1] 2. [...]

[...] This is market, which is relatively new for them and it has high need for development of new customers and building of long term relation with these customers. It will have need from repositioning of their raw material flow and their overall supplier flows. The relationship customer-company has basic importance in the strategy of Gabriel. They have strong mission to integrate their customers in their Blue Ocean strategy and to develop strong innovative and environmentally friendly supply chain. That's why; it will have fundamental importance for Gabriel to find way to communicate with their second tier customers. [...]

[...] They build up a variety of criteria (Code of Conduct), because they are implementing a strategy for environmentally friendly production and are very important to have supplier, which answers on Gabriel's and customers' requirements. On the other hand this has positive effect, because they have a strong relation with their suppliers and in that gives the possibilities for more flexible complex orders for multiple markets. Operating and planning to operate on multiple markets, the company is divided into variety of business units, which is causing a big issue for the information coordination and goal realization. Gabriel could use two approaches for solving of this problem. [...]

[...] In the production circulation the goods are moving through series of steps: scouring, bleaching, dyeing, cutting, sewing and recycling. And the final operating step is an environmental test, where the goods are either going to the first tier or being stored. First tier customers: Outbound logistics is used to connect the ready products with the first tier customers, which normally are Key Account Customers of Gabriel( furniture manufacturers, retail distribution center). Second tier customers : small retailers, which are having direct contact with their end customers. [...]