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• Case | HBS Case Collection | July 2020

  Pattern Brands

  Sunil Gupta, Elie Ofek and Julia Kelley

  In March 2020, direct-to-consumer (DTC) company Pattern Brands needed to decide how to allocate resources across its different brands. Pattern Co-Founders Nick Ling and Emmett Shine hoped to avoid the pitfalls faced by some DTC companies—such as inability to scale and lack of competitive differentiation—by relying on their previous experience running a successful branding and marketing agency. Rather than focusing on a single brand, they conceived Pattern as a “DTC 2.0” model—a portfolio of 5 to 10 brands that shared a common theme of activities related to the home and a common mission of helping millennials enjoy daily life. Since its founding in August 2019, Pattern had launched cookware brand Equal Parts and home organization brand Open Spaces. Although Pattern’s team still believed strongly in the benefits of a multi-brand strategy, Open Spaces’ sales and unit economics had significantly outperformed Equal Parts’ to date. Pattern’s leadership wanted to build on Open Spaces’ early momentum with new product colors and product lines, but they debated whether to act on the results of a recent customer survey indicating a positive response to an Equal Parts product redesign. Ling and Shine now had several decisions to consider. How should they allocate resources between repositioning Equal Parts and continuing to grow Open Spaces? How and when should they continue building Pattern’s portfolio by developing a third brand? How much should they invest in marketing parent brand Pattern? More broadly, did Pattern’s model represent the future of DTC brands?

  Keywords: Brands and Branding; Marketing Channels; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Business Model; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Demand and Consumers; Business Strategy; Diversification; Competitive Advantage; Consumer Products Industry; Retail Industry; North and Central America; United States; New York (city, NY); New York (state, US);

  Citation:

  Gupta, Sunil, Elie Ofek, and Julia Kelley. "Pattern Brands." Harvard Business School Case 521-009, July 2020.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | June 2020 (Revised July 2020)

  Accounting for Leases at American Airlines (A)

  Jonas Heese, Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Julia Kelley

  In March 2020, as coronavirus reduced demand for air travel, an analyst was forecasting American Airlines’ (American’s) first quarter financial results. To develop a forecast, she needed to familiarize herself with Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2016-02, “Leases (Topic 842),” passed four years earlier by the Financial Accounting Standards Board. ASU 2016-02 required companies to disclose all leases on their balance sheets, but it made an exception for leases with variable payments, allowing companies to leave such leases off-balance sheet. The Wall Street Journal estimated that more than 50% of American’s leases remained off-balance sheet due to the exclusion of variable leases. Should American and other companies be allowed to leave variable lease payments off-balance sheet? How did the decision to leave these payments off-balance sheet affect companies’ risk profiles and valuations?

  Keywords: Accounting; Financial Reporting; Financial Statements; Finance; Governance; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Governing and Advisory Boards; Leasing; Accounting Industry; Air Transportation Industry; North and Central America; United States;

  Citation:

  Heese, Jonas, Gerardo Pérez Cavazos, and Julia Kelley. "Accounting for Leases at American Airlines (A)." Harvard Business School Case 120-069, June 2020. (Revised July 2020.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | July 2008 (Revised July 2020)

  Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A)

  Tsedal Neeley and Thomas J. DeLong

  Greg James, a global manager at Sun Microsystems, Inc., sets out to meet with his entire 43-member customer implementation team spread across India, France, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America to resolve a dire customer system outage as required by a service agreement. Rather than finding a swift resolution to the rapidly escalating customer situation that motivated his trip, he finds himself facing distributed work, global collaboration, conflict, and management issues that are threatening to unravel his team.

  Keywords: Groups and Teams; Global Range; Management; Customer Satisfaction; Service Delivery; Crisis Management; Conflict and Resolution; Technology Industry; India; United Arab Emirates; France; United States;

  Citation:

  Neeley, Tsedal, and Thomas J. DeLong. "Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A)." Harvard Business School Case 409-003, July 2008. (Revised July 2020.)  View Details

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