Corporate Efforts to Address Social Problems - Essay Example

Corporate Efforts to Address Social Problems 5 recent references from prominent sources requirement: Students are required to use at least 5 references that are dated later than June 10, 2015 from the following sources: The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Forbes, Fortune, Investor’s Business Daily, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Economist, Fast Company, Money, Entrepreneur, Inc., Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and business and finance academic journals available from the Saint Leo University Library. Up to ten older references and references from other sources are allowed and even encouraged, but they will not count towards the 5 recent references from prominent sources requirement. The Writing Assignment should be in an essay format. The assignment will be done in groups of 2 – 3 students. The group will also be required to make a class presentation of their writing assignment. The grade will depend on the essay and the presentation. The writing assignment will be based on an episode of the first or second season of the CNBC television show The Profit. In the writing assignment and presentation, students should address the following questions about the firm addressed in the episode:          What is the name of the firm and nature of the business of the firm?          What are some strengths of the firm?          What are some problems the firm faces?          What problems or strengths are related to financial topics related to this class?          How does The Profit propose to fix the firm and how does it work out? 3 recent references from prominent sources requirement: Students should find articles that relate to some issues the firm faces from sources other than the television episode. These references do not need to constitute a major part of the essay, but they should have some relevance. Students are required to use at least 3 references that are dated later than July 10, 2015 from the following sources: The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Forbes, Fortune, Investor’s Business Daily, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Economist, Fast Company, Money, The New York Times, Entrepreneur, Inc., Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and business and finance academic journals available from the Saint Leo University Library. Up to 5 older references and references from other sources are allowed and even encouraged, but they will not count towards the 3 recent references from prominent sources requirement. The essay should have some content that addresses the values outcome (learning outcome 8): Discuss and explain the relevance of Responsible Stewardship and Integrity in the context of financial management. Students must inform the professor which episode they will report on by the date given in the syllabus schedule (see Writing Assignment Topic in the schedule). Each group must report on a unique episode, so it is a good idea to select your episode early. The Writing Assignment is to be 1,000 – 1,500 words in length (this range includes everything in the assignment including group member names, title, and citations). Please do not include an abstract in the final paper. The paper should be completed using APA citation standards. An APA Guide and other writing tools are available  My episode was The amazing Grapes from the profit show, and this is what I wrote and all what I need is three recent resources that are dated later than July 10, 2015. What I would like is a resource on: 1- An article related to their firm strengths 2- Two articles that is related to the firm issues My essay: After watching the episode Amazing Grapes from the show The Profit, one relate this to managerial finance. In the episode, one can find strengths of the firm, some problems or weaknesses of the firm, and strengths and problems that can be related to topics in financial management. Finally, the “profit,” Marcus Lemonis, diagnoses the problems in the firm and designs a way to fix their problems. In the episode Amazing Grapes, Marc Lemonis goes to a company located in Orange County, California called Amazing Grace Wine Store. This company is about an hour south of Los Angeles and has a large space for improvement. The nature of the firm is that Amazing Grapes is a wine bar and retail shop. Inside of the store there is a bar located in the back corner where customers can sit down, have a meal, and drink. The main part of the store is isles of different kinds of wines and beers that customers can purchases. When Marcus arrives to Amazing Grapes, he identifies some of the firm’s strengths and weaknesses. Some of the firm’s strengths are in the past year the firm made 3.5 million dollars in revenue, the store is located in a wealthy community, and the wine bar generates the majority of the store’s revenue. Amazing Grapes also has a very strong employee staff. The working staff members are very loyal to the company, love what they do, are hardworking, and will do whatever it takes to keep their company afloat. The article written in New York Times regarding the condition of workers asserts, “Companies that have customer-facing employees and want to keep them must rethink the issue of worker pay,” (Porter, 2015). This insinuates that employee truly act as one of the major strength of any given store, like Amazing Grape. Amazing Grape also has a wide variety of wine inventory. The store also has a website online where customers can purchase products via the web. Although it is a strength for having a wide variety, later on this also can be a weakness if having too much inventory. After defining the strengths of Amazing Grace, Marcus then begins to dig deep and find some of the problems that are causing the firm to be unsuccessful. Even though the company has been producing 3.5 million dollars in revenue in the previous years, the company has so much debt and liabilities that they are actually operating at a loss. The owner of the company states that the company hasn’t made a profit in the nine years the store has been open. The owner is also one of the problems the store faces. He drinks a large amount of their inventory, he is never at the store helping out manage and operate the store, he does not show any leadership characteristics, and is the cause of loss on sales on Saturday nights due to having his loud, unpleasant band playing throughout the night. His band takes up floor space creating less number of seats and tables for customers to sit and purchase food and drinks. In addition, the store has too much inventory and therefore the store is cluttered with boxes and unused product. The store owes over 540,000 dollars to wine vendors since they have ordered too much inventory. The layout of the store is also a problem the store faces. The wine bar is the part of the store that produces the most sales and revenue: however, the bar is located in the back portion of the store and is unseen from the entrance. With all these strengths and weaknesses, it can relate to topics in managerial finance. Some of the topics talked about in this episode of The Profit can be related to managerial finance. One topic is that a manager should order inventory that they know that they can sell in a given timeframe (Cramer, 2015). Even though too much inventory may mean good for the company, the article in Wall Street Journal gives a counter argument asserting that, “an increase in inventory might help capture additional sales revenue, but it will also increase the level of current assets” (Goentzel & Rice, 2015). Another topic talked about in finance for managers is the topic of liquidating your assets. In this particular episode, the store ordered too much inventory, so Marcus suggests them to liquidate the inventory they are not selling in order to pay off some of their debt. They have 540,000 dollars they owe to vendors and 340,000 dollars in inventory that they can liquidate. This would then mean they would still have 200,000 dollars still in debt. They also emphasis on the topic of margins. The company’s current margins are the win bar margin is about 37% of total revenue and the beer and wine is from 14-17% margin of their total revenue. They don’t make enough in their margins to cover their operating expenses (rent bill, electricity bill, employee salaries, water bill, etc.). They also state that when the business started the owners invested one million dollars into the company and now their total liabilities total to 576,000 dollars. Finally, when Marcus makes his investment offer he says he will invest 300,000 dollars into the company for 51% equity, 25% in staff/manager equity, then the rest goes to the current owners. Marcus then will have complete control of the company. After the owners accept Marcus’ offer, he develops a plan to rejuvenate the firm back to life. He wants the people who eat and drink at the bar to actually then buy the item that they were just drinking and to have the bar help drive retail sales. He also wants to generate more wholesales over the web and have less retail space, so there is more space for the wine bar. This will make the bar busier, which in the end will generate more revenue. He also wants to minimize the space for wine and make the store less of a walk-in retail store. He plans to add tables and more chairs to increase the wine bar’s margins. More people will want to come, sit down, and relax, which will make them stay longer and purchase more. His goal is for the wine bar to generate an extra one million dollars in revenue per year. When his plan is in effect, Marcus and Amazing Grapes experience great success. Amazing Grapes experiences a complete remodeling of the store. Marcus brings in a contractor that changes the look and feel of the store. They make the kitchen larger so they are able to produce more, they make the bar longer and more inviting, they offer products in display cases surrounding the bar, and made the seating area more inviting and tripled the number of seats in the area (Page, 2015). This is the same situation with the case of Arby’s restaurant which improved sales as the result of increasing the number of customers visiting. The chief executive is quoted, “Over half our sales growth came through traffic growth, which I’m particularly pleased with because traffic is the elusive element in our industry right now” (Strom, 2015). After Marcus leaves then returns after a few weeks, the staff states on their best Saturday nights they were seeing 3,000 dollars in sales and now are seeing 8,000 dollars. Also, crafted and draft beers use to be 200 dollars and are now seeing 4,000 dollars in sales. In addition, customers are buying products to go and are even buying in house products to consume while at the bar. Marcus also created a private labeled house wine “Amazing Grapes Wine” which will increase the store margins. Lastly, the staff states they were averaging 80,000 dollars a week which calculates to just under 4.2 million dollars a year. This is a 700,000 dollars increase in sales a year. Resources Porter, E. (2015). Corporate Efforts to Address Social Problems Have Limits. New York Times, Dated Sept. 8, 2015, Retrieved on Nov . 13, 2015 from: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/business/economy/corporate-efforts-to-address-social-problems-have-limits.html Goentzel, J. & Rice, J. (2015). Guest Voices: Managing Supply Chains is Intertwined With Financial Management. The World Street Journal, Dated July. 23, 2015, Retrieved from: http://www.wsj.com/articles/guest-voices-managing-supply-chains-is-intertwined-with-financial-management-1437662343 Strom, S. (2015). Arby’s Reports Higher Sales and Plans a Manhattan Restaurant. New York Times, Dated Oct. 28, 2015 retrieved from: www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/business/economy/corporate-efforts-to-address-social-problems-have-limits.html Read More