New opportunities, challenges, and decisions arose for a pub owner and his business partners when celebrity Halle Berry raved on social media about the hot wings served at the pub. Berry's post sparked an unprecedented 28-day sellout and a firestorm of news coverage that kept the business going at a time when the restaurant industry was suffering from government-imposed restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pub owner and his partners .....more

Denitsa Ikonomova is a champion professional dancer on Dancing with the Stars (France) who has become a desired social media influencer. She must now consider the business side of her profession and decide how to leverage her celebrity.

FODY Foods Inc. (Fody) was a Canadian-based entrepreneurial manufacturer and marketer of a line of food products designed for people suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a condition that affected an estimated one billion people worldwide. With public awareness of the socially sensitive condition growing, Fody’s founder needed to figure out how to market the company’s line of products while creating a new category in the process.

Teaching note for product 9B19A002.

By 2016, Birks Group Inc. (Birks) had largely recovered from the 2008 financial crisis and was posting profits again. Birks was a high-end designer and manufacturer of Birks-branded jewellery and a mono-brand and multi-brand retailer of luxury jewellery and watches. It operated 29 retail outlets across Canada under its Maison Birks and Brinkhaus banners and 17 stores in two U.S. states (Florida and Georgia) under the Mayors banner. After restructuring .....more

Sante Au Naturel was a natural health boutique in Montreal’s downtown core. The company was off to a strong start in a growing market, but as its best-selling products became more mainstream, large retailers were entering the market, stealing customers, and driving down margins. In early 2017, Sante Au Naturel's owner reflected on further differentiation of her offering and targeted marketing; she wanted to improve her marketing mix to grow sales .....more

Teaching note for product 9B17A069.

Club Sportif MAA (the MAA) was an iconic fitness club and athletic institution in Montreal and the oldest fitness facility in Canada. In early 2017, the club’s president and general manager faced a changing market and pressure to ensure that the club evolved and remained competitive. Consumer and fitness trends had increasingly fragmented the market in this area, and the MAA membership declined since 2016. The MAA, which traditionally served a fairly .....more