SunShine is a local medium size manufacturing firm specialized in manufacturing colour pens for various use in the office. The firm has a good fame of offering reasonable quality products owe to its structured and good management system. It has been running for 15 years and it is growing slowly. Its major competitors are some small stationery manufacturers scattered around West Malaysia. Though most of the competitors are usually targeting their own markets in their domestic region, one of them is growing steadily. The competitor’s product is spreading slowly to other states in recent years. Furthermore, some international trader such as Daiso and Aceshardware have been importing stationeries (including colour pens) for the last 10 years. With the market analysis with the competitors, SunShine’s product grow has been stagnant for the last two years.
Together with the pandemic COVID-19, SunShine business is receiving impacts from losing orders from the customers. Some staff is forced to take unpaid-leave for the first time and some is forced to have pay cut. Besides, some customers are demanding extra logistics services to be offered with no additional charges. There are also feedbacks from the customers on the outdated fashion of the design of the packages of the colour pens as customers compare them with the imported ones which they purchased from international traders such as Daiso.
Miss Ng, the director is facing some pressure to relax the firms structural planning system to respond more to feedback of the customers. She knows the decision means more services such as transportation and warehouses services need to be provided to the customers with no additional charge. Being a manufacturer, Miss Ng was previously not willing to spend too much energy on the so called “non-core” business activities such as transportation and warehouses other than “production” activities. However, the sliding business is forcing her to make an important decision to sustain the business. She quickly meet Mr.Ho, the warehouse manager and other managers to discuss over the future of the firm. She knows that it is the time now to divert the activities of the SunShine towards the logistics activities and on-line distribution activities where she has previously spend very less attention to sustain the business. These days, customers are looking more on service quality rather than product qualities.
Question 1
Describe the business situation that the company SunShine is currently facing.