Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

This case study I will use a greenhouse business as an example. Let’s say that you are growing food to resale to others in the greehouse setting.

You start off with developing sales to a couple of restaurants that want fresh vegetables daily delivered. You have the resources and ability to do this and so accept the business and begin to deliver. If you were to stop here your business would be open to tremendous risk. There are numerous things that could happen that could cause you to lose these accounts. You must go beyond this as your only source of profits.

Now you could look at produce departments of grocery stores who are always looking for something unique that they can offer their loyal customers. There are a few things that you have that would fit right into this niche so you start to do business with them, and satisfy their customers needs.

Now two is better than one, but there is still a lot of risk there because if you lost one source of profits your company could take a big hit. So you need to look for more sources.

You’re aware that there are farmer markets around so you check into them and see that there are a lot of consumers that go there looking for fresh produce, so a couple of times a week you start selling your wares there and make some excellent sales. Still, you want as many outlets as you can handle without spreading yourself too thin. So you look for other outlets to sell your produce. 

At the farmers market you make contacts with a lot of people and there are some that ask you if they could come out to your greenhouse and pick what they want fresh. With the special opportunity to get the best that you have, this could be a great opportunity to get premium prices for the first pick offered to the customers. 

You see how this works. None of these are moving off of the core business, but each one can build upon another. There are actually more possibilitis that could be entertained, but the idea is to look at your business and see the variety of things that you could offer that will offer your customers more options and your business several outlets that make your business less susceptible to market swings.