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In 2001, Integrated Home Solutions was in trouble. The European Region had demanded their own version, hired folks and started to talk to the trade. We had no idea what they would be trying to actually sell, so I was asked to go in and prevent trouble.
Objective:
Repurpose the existing assets to find a profitable business fast. | | Context:
Fading support from core business; technical issues; team fatigue | Key Strategies:
Focus on the essentials; robust value proposition; simple product close to core; profitable first, scale later; collaborative rather than antagonistic | | Trouble was there already. After four months of patiently digging and listening, I had to conclude that there was no business case. Everything was set for me to be expatriated to Italy to manage the European Operations as a Mini-GM, and now there was no real operation to talk about. Funny how it never even occurred to me to fudge the numbers and live in Italy for a year or two. Instead, I went straight back to our officers and presented the facts. As a consequences, the European operations were reshuffled and I was out of a job. I went on vacation for two weeks, with a lot of mixed feelings. The business was not doing well, with launch dates being pushed almost weekly. We were in trouble. Then my supervisor, Mike Kauffman, asked me to come up with a second way of doing the business, by distributing out products through retail. This was a turnaround of my liking. I had nobody reporting into me directly. Everything I needed to achieve I had to get by convincing folks, by alignment and sheer personality. I think I did well. A year later, we were set to launch at Best Buy and Sears in the US and through a choice selection of retailers in the UK and Italy. I had pulled together technology, sales, marketing, service and operations to actually make it happen. The original business was almost on the backburner, IHS/Retail was the way to do this. It was very profitable, had the support of the core business and the technology groups. I had t-shirts made that spelled: Make It REtAiL. |
