Strategy for Entrepreneurs & Executives - SFEE

07/05/2015

07/05/2015

LEARN ABOUT BUSINESS STRATEGY AND CREATE A PLATFORM FOR MASSIVE GROWTH

Strategy For Entrepreneurs & Executives (SFEE): An educational platform that will empower you to attain the highest level of business acumen and growth

07/05/2015

PREMIUM MARKET to LESS PREMIUM; YOUNGER CONSUMERS; MILLENNIALS; GROCERS; USA; WHOLE FOODS: Premium US grocer is planning to go down market to capture younger consumers who want quality food but cannot afford the prices charged by Whole Foods. They have been losing market share to other nimbler operators. They will unveil the strategy in Sep 2015.

The grocer is building a new lower-priced chain of stores aimed at customers who balk at the high prices that have earned it the moniker "Whole Paycheck" as the company looks for new sources of growth.

20/04/2015

GLOBAL ACQUISITION; SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE; OIL & GAS; AFRICA MOVE; RECRUITMENT INDUSTRY; ADCORP: Adcorp is bring smart expanding globally in the oil & gas vertical to dominate the Southern Hemisphere. This will complement their oil & gas business in Africa because that's where the growth is given that customers here are global. Adcorp is also being future focused by taregetting mainly GAS, which is the fuel of the future. It also combines their high and mid end part of their business in Australia in this vertical of oil & gas

JSE-listed Adcorp has announced its acquisition of specialist oil and gas workforce recruiter, Dare, for an estimated R280m as it seeks to expand into Africa.

15/04/2015

VALUE CHAIN; BACKWARD INTEGRATION; TELECOM NETWORKS; NOKIA: Nokia integrated forwards in the 1980s and 1990s by going into handsets but also had a telephone networks businesses that powers phone systems. Since it has lost ground and sold its handset business to Microsoft it has reduced its vertical integration and now it is integrating backwards to phone networks by bulking up - it is acquiring Alcatel-Lucent to compete more effectively with Sweden's Ericsson and China's Huawei.

HELSINKI/PARIS (Reuters) - Nokia will buy Alcatel-Lucent in an all-share deal that values its smaller French rival at 15.6 billion euros ($16.6 billion), building up its telecom equipment business to compete

05/04/2015

GLOBAL EXPANSION OF RSA COMPANIES OVER THE DECADES: The large mining companies in SA have always been connected globally since the beginning on mining – Anglo/De Beers/Minorco have always played globally and later BHP Billiton did – anyway these companies are exporters of global commodities. Also on the industrials side Remgro/Richemont has been global for decades but recently (post 1994) these were followed by successes such as SA Breweries, Aspen, Bidvest, Dimension Data, Naspers and others. Financial companies have fared the worst with Investec, Old Mutual and Discovery having a mixed record and losing billions of rands in those forays. In very recent times the African growth strategy has met with good success in numerous companies including MTN, Nampak, Randgold Resources (gold mining) and many others.

05/04/2015

GLOBAL EXPANSION; ENTRY ANGLES; CORE COMPETENCIES; CULTURAL AFFINITY; FINANCIAL SERVICES; INSURANCE, OLD MUTUAL: Old Mutual invested offshore in the 2000s and got burned in the USA in the annuities they wrote, according to Wayne McCurrie of Momentum. They also had to restructure their Europeans operations (in the name of Skandia) but in the UK they manage to have success, so the picture has been mixed. In total McCurrie says they lost close to R15bn in the overseas forays. In some ways Old Mutual was not playing to its strengths of asset and wealth management and life insurance. See the video from CNBC Africa

05/04/2015

GLOBAL STRATEGY; ENTRY ANGLES; CORE COMPETENCIES; CULTURAL AFFINITY; FINANCIAL SERVICES; INVESTEC: Numerous SA financial groups went offshore in the 2000s but came short and over the past few years since the recession have un-winded some of those operations. Investec, according to Peter Armitage, who used to work there, is good in private banking, wealth management (old private clients), (institutional) asset management and corporate finance. Outside of this they have battled offshore (like mortgage-backed securities) but on their core competencies listed above they have succeeded especially in the UK, where the business culture is the same as RSAs due to colonial links. They battled and pared back in the USA, Australia and Israel. The entry model for Investec has been wholly-owned acquisitions. See this CNBC Africa video

04/04/2015

MARKET SEGMENTATION; PREMIUM BRAND; BRAND EXTENSION; SUVs NOW PICK-UPs; CARS, MERCEDES-BENZ: Mercedes has for decades been known for its high-end luxury cars and in the past 20 years has gone to the middle and lower income markets but within a premium positioning, with more spec and luxury. They successfully entered the SUV market in the 1990s beating champions then Jeep Cherokee and Nissan Sani. Of course BMW X5 later led the way. So it looks like they will repeat in Pick- up trucks the success they had in SUVs.

Mercedes-Benz Vans to launch midsize Pickup

03/04/2015

CLARITY OF STRATEGY; BRAND EXTENSIONS; GERMS KILLER; INNOVATION; HOUSEHOLD GOODS. DETTOL: This brand is well know as a germ killers (started out as an antiseptic liquid) and the owner of the brand, Reckitt Benckeiser, has exploited this to create many products that have won the hearts of customers. It never hurts to always invest in a brand!

03/04/2015

DIFFERENT SEGMENTS; BUILDING MATERIALS RETAILING: Cashbuild makes money by selling to the value markets in small towns and townships, especially as people make renovations from shacks to brick houses. Big box retailer Builders Warehouse, owned by Massmart, sells to more affluent folks in the suburbs and other places.

03/04/2015

STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT; HOW YOUR STRATEGY AFFECTS STAKEHOLDERS; ENSURE YOU KNOW WINNERS & LOSERS IN YOUR STRATEGY: Gaming and Hotel operator Sun International manages it's stakeholders this way, as per the pic shown.