Introduction
Hi, my name is Gabriel, and I was selected to participate the in FutureFounder Brazil program, which is teaching me a lot about how startups work, how to make an organizational framework, and develop my strategic skills. My study case for today is on MadeiraMadeira.
Conducting a Strategic Analysis
MadeiraMadeira is an online retailer of home goods, founded in 2009 in the city of São José dos Pinhais, PR, by Daniel Scandian and Marcelo Scandian. Its headquarters was later changed to the city of Curitiba, PR. MadeiraMadeira’s vision is to deliver consistent high-performance results, ensuring business scalability and sustainability, and its mission is reinventing the way people build their homes. MadeiraMadeira became the 16th Brazilian unicorn this year 2021, the name given to companies valued at least US$ 1 billion. To reach the value, the startup announced a contribution of US$ 190 million led by SoftBank and Dynamo. The company was created 10 years ago and registered a growth of 120% in 2020, favored both by the greater demand for items for the home and by the advance of e-commerce. Both segments benefited from the new coronavirus pandemic.
Defining a Strategy
To start building MadeiraMadeira’s strategic plan, we should start using the STEEPLE and SWOT analysis methods. But how do they work?
STEEPLE offers an overview of various external fields. It is an acronym for Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, Legal, and Ethical. You can get practical insight into each of these factors, and these elements can affect your business.
SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, on the other hand, is a framework used to evaluate a company's competitive position and to develop strategic planning. If you want to trace a plan for your business, you really should start using this method. First, we needed to perform a general analysis of the company, so that we could identify possible problems or failures. In our case, we recognized delays in deliveries:. Did you know that most companies that sell furniture take almost 70 days to deliver their products? MadeiraMadeira is no exception. According to our research, delivery time is the one thing people complain the most about MadeiraMadeira, many of whom were disappointed saying that their orders took 1 to 2 months to be delivered. Based on that, our strategy aimed at reducing delivery time.
Defining a Strategic Roadmap
To reduce the store's delivery time, a strategy was created based on two key results.
The first key result is reducing delivery time to a maximum of one week. As an activity I proposed to get in touch with more distributors to expand the number of trucks circulating and deliver more items at the same time. An additional activity would be tracking trucks and try to find shorter routes. The third step would be to decrease the number of manual processes, such as filling in documents, which often takes a lot of time and effort.
The second key result is to get at least two pieces of feedback from each consumer. As an activity for this key result, a delivery evaluation system, and not just a general evaluation of the product should be implemented, so that everyone knows which is the best distributor. A second activity would be ranking the best delivery companies so that the consumer can have an idea of shipping times and those that offer a better experience.
Recommendations
After all my research during one weekend, which will be right after the text, I could understand that MadeiraMadeira is one of the best startups when it comes to furniture or even all home goods and has more potential to increase in the future. Their big problem is the delivery time as no one likes to wait for so long to receive a product.
I’d recommend they invest in more delivery companies to reduce such long waiting times and make more satisfied customers. That would still make them take up much more space in the market, especially those that take longer to deliver as well.
Key Takeaways
After doing the research and putting everything together in just one text, I was able to conclude that with this first strategic analysis I learned a lot during this first week together with my fellows, and I cannot wait for the next few weeks of the program.
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