Many people thought of knitting as a hobby for grandmothers, but the time-honored craft had evolved into a booming business with loyal, passionate, and interactive customers worldwide. The Spanish e-commerce business We Are Knitters (WAK) spent the last decade growing into what investors called the “world leader in online knitted kit sales,” a segment of the global $100 billion knitting industry. WAK’s sales soared by 240 per cent between April 2019 .....more

Teaching note for product W27015.

Teaching note for product 9B20M191.

On November 23, 2018, the US jewellery maker Tiffany & Co. (Tiffany) received the final verdict in a years-long legal battle with the Swiss watchmaker The Swatch Group Ltd. (Swatch), which required Tiffany to pay Swatch millions of Swiss francs in damages (plus additional legal fees). The subject of the conflict was a strategic alliance the two companies had announced in 2007, which had once been called a "historic agreement" and a "pathbreaking .....more

From its humble beginnings as a start-up in China’s Jinjiang County in 1989, Joeone Company Ltd. (Joeone) had grown to become the country’s best-selling producer of men’s pants. Over the past three decades, the company’s founder and chairperson had faced several substantive turning points, including a quality crisis, a period of mediocre growth, and the need to enhance the sophistication of the company’s management approach. These turning points led .....more

Teaching note for product 9B20M030.

In late 2012, Shanghai Euclid Printing Machine Co. (Shanghai Euclid), a joint venture between a Chinese state-owned enterprise and an American multinational enterprise, was in the process of closing down. Established in December 1993, the joint venture had experienced successive rounds of downsizing over the past 18 years, dropping from an original high of 1,800 employees to a workforce size of 668 in 2012. In its place, a 100-per-cent state-owned .....more

Teaching note for product 9B19M051.

Teaching note for product 9B13M016.

In 2012, two years after a major restructuring project had begun at German skin care producer Beiersdorf, the process was still ongoing. The new chief executive officer (CEO) inherited several challenges from his predecessor, including the difficult implementation of the new transnational strategy, opposition from employees and the work council, and ineffective market-entry strategies (especially in China). Strong competitors and a slow rate of economic .....more