[College]
Part 1.
Naked Wines (referred to as NW) is the crowdfunded wine businesses founded in 2008 by Steve Lewis, who scaled his Virgin Wines experience into the NW.
The value chain consists of inbound logistics: it orders from 106 winemakers from around the world (Naked Wines, 2016). Advantages: good soil, maker's knowledge, the proper production facilities, good price, large variety. Disadvantages: the right weather, expert ratings. The other constituent is operations: prepayment through the Internet from more than 300,000 "angels.' Advantage: Technological, ‘angels’ investment into the recommended wineries, customer participation in the process. Disadvantage: some wines may not be available; production of wine process takes time, not known adherence to winemaking rules. Outbound Logistics consists of free delivery on orders over £80. The company is marketing wines through web search portal with the infinite number of wines and database of over 53,000 wines and is constantly expanding its subscriber's database. Advantage: price, variety, effective marketing. NW is balancing its services to meet the customer needs in conformance to the quality standard and under the constant innovation.
The quality of wine much depends on 'vintage' years. As the company pursued the low-cost generic strategy, it pays a minimum of attention to weather conditions during vegetation of wines, the patience of producers or expert rating.
Therefore, as a venture capitalist, I would take into consideration the two facts. The industry has the high power of buyers, a threat of substitutes, threat of new entry and competitive rivalry but the moderate power of suppliers. The wine drinking has some essential elements, such as cultural context, drinking experience, palate of the wine-drinker, etc. (Hammond, 2000).
Part 2.
Q 1. The NW has the key skills in the expertise of the wine suppliers, and in treating the customers as the partners instead of the competitors. The other necessary skill is of the CEO Steve Lewis to scale the experience he received in Virgin Wines. The wine production requires the integrated skills in the various areas including management of supply channels, benefits, business portfolio, costs, quality, expertise, meeting the tight supply schedules. NW sustains its skills through the relationships with the key stakeholders - management, suppliers and customers. Interaction with management helps to manage the 'talent pool;' communication with vendors - maintain the quality/price benefit; relation with clients tap customer satisfaction. These integrated skills translate into the new value associated with the brand. The strong brand can successfully sustain the market competition and the economic difficulties.
Q2. There are several significant aspects of the NW organization. The first aspect is everything: “quality in wine--or in business--is not one thing or another, it is everything” (Hammond, 2000). Everything in the wine business is quality, weather, experience, habits, palate, price, variety, etc. According to Waterman at all, everything in business is system, structure, style, staff, skills, strategy and superordinate goals (1980). The cutting edge in NW is the balance between the other two specific aspects: products – the product differentiation and quality on the one hand; experience on the contrary – key to winning the customer loyalty, to recognize what the winery does is the great thing. The product quality relies more on staff, skills, and systems while experience on strategy, structure, style and superordinate skills. Therefore, the most important aspects to support the strategy in NW is in maintaining the constantly balanced change with keeping in mind everything to be able to exceed the customer expectations.
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eferences
Naked Wines. (2016). About Us. Retrieved from https://www.nakedwines.com/about/index.htm
Hammond, J. (2000). The naked truth about business excellence. Total Quality Management, 11(4/5/6), S666.
Waterman, R., Peters, T. & Philips, J. (1980). Structure is not organization. Business Horizons.
