Black honeylemon: Assignment ~ Case Study

Case Study

J.J’S. FASHIONS

Miss Jennifer Johari, a young beautiful energetic lasso from the island north of Peninsular Malaysia often called the Pearl of the Orient, is the founder of a firm specializing in designing and tailoring clothes for the working girl. The firm has an office, show room and retail outlet in a shopping complex in Kuala Lumpur, while the design and production unit is located at Kampong Datuk Keramat, about 12 kilometers from Kuala Lumpur’s city centre. Her design and production unit has a permanent staff of 20 and if the need arises she depends on out-sourcing which till now did not seem to be a big problem. The show room was under the supervision of her cousin and she was handling it well. For most of the time, Jennifer is in Datuk Keramat and at other times she juggles from being in the show room and meeting prospective clients and attending to other business matters.

Through her designing ability, sales effort and correct timing in the market, the company prospered and grew very fast. Its’ sales rose from RM20,000 in the first year of operation to almost RM1,000,000, three years later. The designing, production and marketing staff grew almost as fast. This was beyond Jennifer’s expectations.

Then the company began having problems. Uncertainty and confusion set in. The managers that Miss Jennifer Johari appointed, and most of them were her relatives and family friends, made decision to the best of their ability, but the outcomes sometimes did not fit together. Perhaps this was so because the enterprise was expanding fast. One of the older managers then suggested that the company needed planning and clear policies to guide decision making and thereby better business management. Miss Jennifer just had secondary education and then went on to take a 6 months course in tailoring and dress making before founding this sole-proprietorship business. She had no formal training in business management, but her gut feeling always seem to come to her rescue, at least until now.

Miss Jennifer Johari was impressed by the suggestion made by the manager, but her response was that if she took the time off to plan and develop policies today, she might not have a company the next day. She has been so busy and could not even find the time to attend short courses conducted by the various government agencies. Hence, she had no choice but to solve each day’s problems as and when they arose. She was a busy lady and sometimes worked past midnight and then be on the job at 8.00 in the morning. Luckily she was staying in a condominium mid-way between her office and the production house.

Questions:

Perform a SWOT Analysis on J.J’s Fashions.
** SWOT is stand for
S = Strength
W = Weaknesses
O = Opportunities
T = Threats