"Welcome to the Bi-Flo side of the business. I'm Phil Garrison, the MD. I've been in the job for nearly 10 years now and

[answerhappygod]

"Welcome to the Bi-Flo side of the business. I'm Phil Garrison,
the MD. I've been in the job for nearly 10 years now and we've been
through some pretty exciting times. I've got a young team that make
a real impression with the customers.
My Director of Production is Anders Hassing. He looks after the
two factories at C2 and C25. The factory at C2 makes
the Dependable range of products, whilst the
factory at C25 makes the Excellent range. Anders
has two site managers, Colin Farrell at C2 and Michael Giering at
C25. All three have been with us less than 3 years and recognise
that they are on a pretty steep learning curve trying to keep up
with the sales growth.
As well as distribution, Samantha also handles the sourcing
activity of Favourite from Forexland. Samantha
moved across to Distribution from Production, when the previous
Distribution manager retired. It has been her idea to directly
source from Forexland, rather than manufacture the products here.
Alex had been a Manager in the Distribution Centre.
On the Sales and Marketing side my Director is James Garrick.
James lives in the fast lane, but his style of approach has
definitely made a huge difference to our business. He's been with
me for 6 years.
Our products are all for use in domestic appliances. 65% of our
business is done with Dependable. It's made at the
factory at C2 and is our most complex product . All the materials
are imported from suppliers in Deltaland through the port at
C20.
28% of our business is done
with Excellent made at the factory at C25 with
materials imported from Epsilonland. These come in through C11.
All Dependable and Excellent products
are made from plastic, paper and other synthetic materials.
At each of our factories we also have a component warehouse.
The rest of the business is with Favourite, the
new range of kits that we source from Forexland. We bulk buy these
on a non-replenishable basis and import them direct into the
Distribution Centre at C24 through the port at C20. This whole
concept is an experiment for us. The problems we have had with
forecasting have made it difficult to get the levels of
availability we need without incurring massive inventory costs. The
nature of the product is very simple with little technical
advancements, but the product can be simply slotted into the
appliance. Although they are not replenishable, we can substitute
alternatives that are of a similar quality. Coming from the Far
East the cost of manufacturing is also lower.
On the customer side 41% of our business is done with
wholesalers and 26% with distributors. We have made real progress
with account management in both of these groups and this has
fuelled the growth in sales.
19% of our business is exported and the rest is done through the
OEM's athough we see this area declining.
Last year sales were H$390 million up 15% from the previous
year. Profits however declined to 9% mainly as a result of the
higher inventory and manufacturing costs. In particular we have had
problems with Dependable. It is a complex product and
in order to support the availability targets we have had to
increase inventory significantly. Over the last five years the
figures show us:
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
200,570
244,695
293,635
340,616
391,709
20,050
26,918
35,229
37,460
34,503
It's a pity because many of our big customers are keen to
collaborate with us further, but I have resisted until we get our
internal act together. I'm hoping that the merger will enable us to
pick up some of Air-Flo's skills. Most of our growth over the last
few years has been gained from actively trying to understand how
our customers will use the product and responding with improvements
to the level of functionality.
Our whole success as a business is derived from responding to
OEM requirements since our product is embedded into theirs. Of
course this means the complexity has also increased. We believe
however, that this is essential as our market is becoming more and
more competitive. We are fortunate that Government policy has
encouraged many of the appliance manufacturers to put their
regional manufacturing operations in our country. If these policies
were to change, or if other countries were to create better
incentives, we could experience significant pressure on
volumes.
The power of some of the wholesalers and distributors is also of
concern. Traditionally, the market has always operated in this way,
but attempts by new OEM's to come to us direct have been resisted
aggressively by them. The key thing is that OEM's need these
players for the after-market to get replacement filters into the
stores. We do not deal with retailers directly, since this has been
the historical agreement with our customers.
We would like to change this structure, but our volumes going
into the after-market are significant. All of the wholesalers and
distributors handle a variety of products, across a range of
sectors and so their cost base is very attractive. We would need a
very slick supply chain to compete with them.
Our success has come from using our customer relationships to
identify product enhancements that the market needs. Sometimes our
capability to introduce these enhanced products is stretched,
resulting in increased manufacturing costs or poor product
availability. We are therefore excited that the merger could
provide us with skills in these areas.
question:
How Bi-Flo could effectively communicate to the public that it
intends to reduce the carbon footprint. things to considered before
putting together your response, what is a carbon footprint? and how
does it relate to BI-Flo operation? what changes could Bi-Flo make
to reduce the foot print? once you understand this you can then
begin to response and explain How Bi-Flo can communicate its
intension to do this to its customers and general public.