The Maritime Treading Company: a clear and concise statement of the major problem, a critical well-structured analysis of the situation that supports your recommendations and a clearly articulated implementation strategy.
The Maritime Trading Company
In February 1999, Kent Groves sat in a coffee shop thinking about his company's new site on the World Wide Web. As president of Maritime Trading Company, a small business he started in 1993, he still made most of the decisions for the company.
Maritime Trading had had a Web site since 1995. Until recently, there had been no real strategy for the site. In 1995, some friends of Kent's, who had developed skills in Web site development, offered to create one for MTC for little cost. Kent's attitude toward this was "let's throw it up and see what happens." From that time until the end of 1997, co-op students from a local university maintained it. The only purpose of the site was to be an on-line extension of the company's catalogue, giving people using the Internet access to the products.
In November 1998, Kent had the site redesigned to appear more professional and include complete, secure on-line ordering. He wanted to entice people to visit and order on-line. Kent wondered how to both draw traffic to the Web site and encourage customers to come back. His goal was to provide the most interactive and secure on-line shopping experience in Atlantic Canada.
Company Background
Maritime Trading began as a mail-order company specializing in foods and consumables unique to Nova Scotia. Its first catalogue was published in 1993 and products were only marketed in Canada at that time. Between 1993 and 1999, new products were added and subsequent versions of the catalogue were produced. See Exhibit 1 provides a synopsis of the company's development.
MTC had been keeping track of its customers and sales in a database for several years. Although the company had customers from all walks of life, the typical customer had remained the same. Women in their late 30s to 50s, with considerable disposable income, were the greatest consumers of the company's products. When it came to mail-order sales, this typical customer was generally restricted from shopping in person either by geography or time constraints. Maritime Trading had never done very much prospecting for new business; eighty percent of its business had come from repeat customers over the last two years.
The company broke even in 1998. Kent felt this was appropriate, "It takes five years to build a critical mass in a direct-to-consumer venue." Maritime Trading had moved away from just marketing its products to the rest of Canada. Its new slogan, "Delivering Atlantic Canada to the World," clearly expressed its new scope.
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