Setting Clients Up for Success
Case Studies
Strategic Consulting & Leadership
COMPANY
Jaipur Living is the third largest rug and textile manufacturer in the United States. Over 400 employees live the privately held company's purpose: to make life beautiful.
SITUATION
Jaipur Living was experiencing very high growth and needed to rethink its approach to marketing. Efforts needed to be more efficient – in terms of both time and profit. Leadership also wanted to vet entry into D2C without harming their existing business.
TASK
Jaipur Livings’ revenue were around $50M annually when they engaged our CEO Susannah Campbell as a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer. Specifically, she was charged with:
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Assessing and resetting overall business growth strategy, including channels for growth.
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Restructuring the marketing department to support that growth, including recommending changes to other departments as well.
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Setting clear expectations for employees, hiring new employees and discharging those not meeting expectations.
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Evaluating current marketing tools, such as trade shows, licensing/partnerships and lead generation in order to increase ROI per dollar spent on a 7 figure budget.
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Increasing consumer and customer understanding to inform a potential shift into D2C without alienating current, long-standing home goods and interior design relationships.
ACTION & RESULTS
Within a year, she had:
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Developed a multi-year strategy for branching into new channels while honoring the base business.
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Grew the base business by almost+30%.
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Implemented marketing automation and increased order values and frequency.
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Reorganized the department, replacing and/or hiring as necessary.
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Reduced the outsourced budget by half, bringing key activities in-house.
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Reduced the time to market new products by 6 months with marketing, photography, and Web efficiencies.
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Conducted the company’s first qualitative and quantitative research efforts within industry verticals (i.e. Ecommerce, Interior Designers, Homegoods Stores) and consumers
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Impacted product development by targeting highest value consumers.
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Increased likelihood to buy by predicting and developing products with a higher probability of success.
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Reduced long-term inventory loads by informing quantities to be produced, based on new early-read system for customer and consumer response to designs and predictability around buying habits.
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Recruited and trained a permanent leader with the skills necessary to see that multi-year strategy through, ultimately exiting the high-functioning department after over a year of part-time direction.
Jaipur Living
Third Largest Rug &
Textile Company
in the US
Customer Analytics & Understanding
COMPANY
Prologis, Inc is the global leader in logistics real estate with a focus on high barrier, high growth markets. The firm has annual revenues of $5.5+Bn and manages over 1.2 billion square feet in investment properties (113 million square meters) in 19 countries. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Prologis leases modern logistics facilities to a diverse base of approximately 6,600 customers worldwide. Their customers span dozens of industry verticals and range from startups to major multi-nationals.
SITUATION
Prologis engaged First Line Strategy to :
(1) Help them deeply understand their 6,600 customers, including their customer journeys, key decision points and key decision makers;
(2) Guide sales strategy for its new Essentials business, a secondary revenue stream that answer its tenants’ “inside the walls” needs (i.e. shelving, machinery, services, equipment), and;
(3) Inform Prologis how to transition customer relationships from transactional to vital business support.
TASK
Prologis needed to gain in-depth understanding of its customer base, including the most likely prospects, sales approaches and bundles to achieve success.
ACTION
Over the course of a little more than a year, First Line Strategy:
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Employed deep data analytics on past customer leasing and purchasing behaviors in order to formulate industry-specific Customer Journey Maps and Sell Sheets.
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Conducted qualitative interviews with Prologis’ clients, prospects, leasing agents and third-party brokers from over 13 industry verticals and the gamut of company sizes to inform strategy.
OUTPUTS & RESULTS
First Line Strategy developed customer personas, journey maps, selling materials and more that were customized by industry, company-size and life stage.
Think of it as 6,600 client dossiers representing almost $6Bn in annual revenues synthesized into simpler, actionable pictures of who to speak with, when, with what messages and offers. Customer types also were prioritized in order to maximize marketing spend and outreach ROI.
Prologis continues to increase its profitability margin per square foot on an annual basis, recently contributing a 19.71% year-over-year revenue increase.
Prologis, Inc
World's Largest Logistics REIT
How Does a Foreign Company Break into a US Monopoly?
COMPANY
Wyda Industria de Embalagens is the number one aluminum products company in Brazil for both consumer and industrial use. The family-owned business is based in Sorocaba, Brazil, and focuses on the production of disposable/recyclable aluminum foil containers, trays and dishes, as well as PVC products from cling-wrap to household gloves.
SITUATION
After 30 years of steady expansion across Latin America and Africa/Middle East, Wyda had achieved annual revenues of over $100M USD. The company felt confident enough to look to the US market, but needed to understand the channels, retailers, distribution networks and price points.
ACTION
First Line Strategy provided Wyda with its strategy for US market entry, which included an organized approach to both retail and wholesale channels and players:
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Recommended best set of products with which to enter the US market.
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Determined best channel for entry into the US market, and pattern for expansion.
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Developed costing analysis to guide what they needed to hit in order to be competitive in light of import tariffs, distribution fees, and expected retailer markups by channel.
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Recommended pricing by product type and provided profit predictions by channel.
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Strategized on where and how to set up distribution headquarters here in the US.
As well, FLS provided the advance sales team, targeting key buyers by select retailers per channel via direct email. Campaign got Wyda in front of the main players in their first two channels of entry, resulting in an 80% success rate for obtaining meetings and invitations to bid on product manufacturing needs.
RESULTS
Ultimately, Wyda bid on over $100M USD in contracts – gaining access in a year to the same amount of revenue that the company had amassed over its first 30+ years in existence.
Within three years of first engaging with FLS, Wyda opened its first manufacturing plant in the US to meet demand, targeting private label and restaurant customers just as FLS had advised and helped bring to fruition.
Wyda Industria de
Embalagens
South America's Leading
Aluminum Products &
Packaging Company
Defining Success Metrics
COMPANY
Emory Healthcare, part of Emory University, is the most comprehensive academic health system in Georgia.
Made up of 11 hospitals, the Emory Clinic, and more than 250 provider locations, Emory Healthcare has annual revenues of $1.9B.
SITUATION
Emory Healthcare’s Marketing department engaged First Line Strategy to help them establish an insights and analytics group and revise the structure of the marketing department itself.
TASK
Specifically, FLS defined the group’s purpose, structure, staffing, accountability, data sources and data needs.
This included a multi-year plan for growing the department.
ACTION
EHC and FLS collaborated though a series of discussions and database analysis sessions.
FLS assessed the insights departments of other hospital and healthcare networks to define peer institution benchmarks, interviewed stakeholders and department leads to determine key metrics/drivers of patient choice, discussed current team roles and responsibilities to inform future departmental structure, and mapped out the steps in the patient journey to determine what metrics of success could be leveraged and what data needed to be sought.
RESULT
Ultimately, FLS developed a multi-year plan for the department, including waves of data acquisition, employee hires and promotions. EHC was very satisfied with the plan developed, and is in the process of implementing the multi-year strategy.
Emory Healthcare
Southeastern US Preeminent
Medical Center
