The Rise and Fall of the J. Peterman Company
Answer #1
On my point of view positioning statement of the J. Peterman Company could look like: “To romantic people from 35 to 55 who appreciate unique emotional feelings and who are intellectually and emotionally on a journey, J. Peterman Company is a provider of unique, romantic, authentic, excellent goods by catalog and Internet”. Core competence of the very company is again selling different goods that are associated with “authentic”, “unique”, “romantic”, “excellent”, “journey”, “wondrous” concepts, especially clothes, by catalog.
Another competence that differentiates the company from others is corporate culture within it. Many had criticized the culture where employees had too much freedom and authority in making decisions. Lately, this freedom and recruitment mistakes set boundaries between old and new staff and destroyed the collective.
However, with the growth of the company the product line was expanded. The more items were added to a catalog, the less of them were fit to the six descriptions stated above, thus, to the main concept of the company. Target market was enlarged and products became more commercial than wondrous or authentic.
Answer #2
During the growth, the first challenge of every developing company is money, that is, finding source of capital. It’s difficult to find investors, but more difficult to convince them that the business is going to be profitable and you, as an owner and top manager, are able to lead the company to a success. J. Peterman needed to expand and needed an additional capital.
Another difficulty was caused by the system of running the business, absence of good business plan. Neither top manager, nor employees had clear concept and id ...