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• Case | HBS Case Collection | January 2019 (Revised July 2019)

  New Balance: Managing Orders and Working Conditions

  Michael W. Toffel, Eileen McNeely and Matthew Preble

  New Balance Athletics, Inc., a major U.S.-based athletic footwear and apparel brand, sources most of its footwear products from independent suppliers whose factories are located in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Monica Gorman, vice president of responsible leadership and global compliance, is seeking to combine data sets collected by different parts of the organization to see whether she and her colleagues in the company’s order management function can make a clear connection between the corporate social responsibility (CSR) results that her function tracks at the supplier level and with New Balance’s order placement practices.

  Keywords: Footwear; Athletic Footwear; manufacturing; CSR; sustainability; Quality Management; supply chains; Operations; Management; Production; Working Conditions; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Labor and Management Relations; Supply Chain Management; Supply Chain; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Consumer Products Industry;

  Citation:

  Toffel, Michael W., Eileen McNeely, and Matthew Preble. "New Balance: Managing Orders and Working Conditions." Harvard Business School Case 619-002, January 2019. (Revised July 2019.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | December 2018 (Revised June 2019)

  Wolfgang Puck: Setting the Table for the Future

  Boris Groysberg and Matthew G. Preble

  Chef Wolfgang Puck oversees a disparate business empire that includes fine dining restaurants, a catering business, and various licensed products that run from cookware, to soup, to fast-casual restaurants. His businesses activities are divided among three separate entities—Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, Wolfgang Puck Catering, and Wolfgang Puck Worldwide—that share some formal and informal linkages. But the key person holding this all together is Wolfgang Puck himself. Now in his late 60s, Puck wonders what he needs to formalize—in terms of systems, processes, and management—to ensure that his different businesses will endure long after he is no longer involved in the day-to-day management of these three businesses.

  Keywords: Brands and Branding; Growth and Development; Management Systems; Business Processes; Leadership; Transition; Food and Beverage Industry; Consumer Products Industry;

  Citation:

  Groysberg, Boris, and Matthew G. Preble. "Wolfgang Puck: Setting the Table for the Future." Harvard Business School Case 419-001, December 2018. (Revised June 2019.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2019 (Revised June 2019)

  Wayfair

  Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie L. Ma and Matthew G. Preble

  In 2016 Niraj Shah and Steve Conine, founders of online home goods retailer Wayfair, are faced with a decision about how to improve user experience on their e-commerce sites. A key driver of consumer interest and conversion to purchase in the home category is visual imagery, which has traditionally been generated not by the retail channel but rather by the manufacturers. Catalog retailers, in particular, are famous for visually romancing the category. As a comprehensive offering, Wayfair hosts over seven million SKUs on its site, so it must solve for the lack of visual assets from manufacturers by generating visual assets of its own. Initially, the company embarks on a plan to produce these images using traditional photography studios and professional staffs, but costs mount and throughput is too slow. Seeking a solution, Shah and Conine assess the likelihood of using technology—specifically, high-resolution 3D modeling from low-resolution 2D images—to address the challenge. Resolving this issue is especially pressing, given that Wayfair has just launched private label lines and a host of what it calls lifestyle brands, which require support from high-end visual merchandising. As a consequence, the question of how to provision visual assets becomes a question of how fast Wayfair can grow. This case presents the factors involved in deciding what direction to take—a reliable path using traditional methods or a risky path using bleeding-edge technologies.

  Keywords: visual assets; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Decision Making; Business or Company Management; Growth Management; Innovation and Invention; Operations; Strategy; Technology; Retail Industry; Service Industry; United States; Massachusetts;

  Citation:

  Rayport, Jeffrey F., Susie L. Ma, and Matthew G. Preble. "Wayfair." Harvard Business School Case 819-045, April 2019. (Revised June 2019.)  View Details

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