Whistling Bird Winery

The Whistling Bird Winery has experienced above-industry-average growth in new revenues over the past five years. Although operating with a heavy debt position, the firm, owned and managed by Laurie Johnson, has developed award winning premium table wines that have been enthusiastically accepted by consumers in the northeastern United States. The firm currently has expansion plans that include grape growing land, expanding capacity at its winery, and increasing its fledgling retail operations. Laurie has quickly realized that private equity funding is her only viable option and is evaluating her position at the winery, from both an owner and a manager perspective. With the cost of equity capital quite expensive, is her current expansion proposal worthwhile

Wine World Estates

Wine World Estates has been a wholly owned subsidiary of the Nestle Company for a quarter of a century. This rapidly growing business unit has been put up for sale, and Walter Klenz, its CEO, is leading a management inspired leveraged buyout in competition with two other large potential buyers. His challenge is to arrange for a financing package of more than $350 million to successfully achieve his objective

The Globalization of Beringer Blass Wine Estates

The Beringer Blass Wine Estates Corporation was created by the $1.5 billion purchase of U.S. based Beringer Wines Estates by Australia based Foster\u27s Brewing Group. Each firm, operating independently up to the time of their deal, had expanded in their industries through both internal growth via development of premium wine brands and external growth via acquisitions of new brands. In September, 2002, Walt Klenz, President of the wine operations of the firm, privately contemplated how to guide Beringer Blass towards its strategic goals in an industry that was rapidly consolidating on a global basis

Does My Business Need a Human Resources Function? A Decision-Making Model for Small and Medium-Sized Firms

The questions of when and what types of human resource (HR) support are needed tend to be unanswerable for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This article addresses this gap in the strategic HR literature. Hiring, training, employee retention/satisfaction, wages and benefits programs, and worker’s compensation insurance are important to SMEs seeking to build strong capabilities and resources and to increase their competitive advantage. This article presents an analysis of the existing HR literature for SMEs. It introduces a decision model to help SMEs choose a cost-effective HR strategy, listing a range of options from hiring the HR function to electronic HR (eHR) and outsourcing

Connectivity & Communication: A Study of How Small Wine Businesses Use the Internet

This paper addresses the development and effects of Internet use by small wine businesses.   It includes useful insights that can be applied to other small businesses, and also provides helpful information for consultants and entrepreneurship educators. An exploratory framework is presented that includes a four-stage sequence through which small businesses typically progress in relation to the use of Internet-related tools. The stages include awareness, design, implementation, and practice. Propositions are also developed to guide analysis of the framework, and an  empirical test of various parts of the framework is performed using a sample of 382 wineries. Results showed that, beyond the use of e-mail for communication and connectivity, awareness of the Internet's uses is moderate, while implementation is moderate to low. Thirty-nine percent of the respondents believe the Internet will make a strong contribution to sales and profitability in the future, though only 9% report they are currently achieving this with Internet utilization

Does Size Matter? An Empirical Investigation into the Competitive Strategies of the Small Firm

This paper examines whether different strategies are associated with different sized firms in a focal industry dominated by small family-owned businesses. In an effort to shed light on how strategic choice is determined, a well-defined and geographically concentrated industry, i.e., the Northern California wine industry, is selected to minimize environmental noise. Factor analysis is applied to fourteen strategic elements to extract a parsimonious set of five primary competitive strategies: new product/market development, consolidation, niche focus, proprietary processes, and flexibility. The factors, new product/market development and consolidation as well as the control variable, age, are found to be significantly  associated with firm  size.

Beringer Wine Estates Holdings, Inc. 1997

The Beringer Wine Estates Company has been expanding its market share in the premium segment of the wine industry through the decade of the 1990s. After operating as a wholly owned subsidiary of the giant Nestle Food Company for about a quarter of a century, the firm was sold in 1996 to new owners in a leveraged buyout. Students are presented with a number of corporate decisions covering management\u27s decision to go public in the late 1990s. Timing issues are critical, as is the pricing of the issue, and the impact of this decision on the firm\u27s cost of capital. Financial strategies, financial forecasting, and the valuation of a private vs. a public firm flow from the case data as well as the use of publicly-traded common stock that could be used as currency for enhancing the firm\u27s growth rate and business opportunities

The renaissance strategist

Abstract The innovation practice of small family firms is an important and growing field of study. Top management teams' styles, their strategic orientations, and perceptions of external environment promote or deter innovation. This exploratory research proposes a model depicting the extent to which location impacts these variables. Ten Tuscan and ten Californian family wineries are investigated via questionnaire and in-person interviews to develop longitudinal case studies describing barriers or incentives to innovate. Changes in processes, products, or market orientations are subordinated to how top managers perceive internal and external pressure to implement innovation. Key Words: Strategy, Innovation, Location, Wine Business Desperately Seeking Serendipity: Exploring the Impact of Country Location on Innovation in the Wine Industry There is no strategy without surprise, no surprise without creativity, and true surprise and creativity are rare. Seeking strategic insight is the first key to obtaining these rare commodities, recognizing the importance of those insights when they arise is the second. Looking backward, many strategic insights sound trivial; looking forward, they are an incredible challenge to develop, recognize, and implement. The relentless search for insights is what keeps innovative companies and courageous entrepreneurs busy day and night