CLIPPER TEAS LTD

Clipper Teas Ltd

Clipper Teas Ltd

Introduction

Recently, the US based coffee company Clipper Teas Ltd is facing great problems affecting not only their financial situation. The company's price share decreased by more than 40% over the past year and the sales in the US stores opened for more than one year decreased by 1% in the quarter. The consumer spending in US was decreased, thus the company decided to open 425 outlets less than it initially planned. At the beginning of the January, chief executive Jim Donald was sacked because of the company's problems and consequently was hired chairman and former chief executive Howard Schultz (Smale, 2008). According to the analysts, the problems of Clipper Teas Ltd are much deeper and are affecting also the image and good name of the company. One of the greatest problems of Clipper Teas Ltd is that the company lost its focus. According to Schultz, the company “got a little soft” after being so long in this kind of business and needs to return to what made it extraordinary (Smale, 2008). As he continuous, he admits that company is literally “cannibalizing” its own sales because the US outlets are opened almost on every corner of biggest cities (Smale, 2008). Thus it seems that Clipper Teas Ltd outlets compete between themselves not with their direct competitors. Such quick and great expansion hurt image of the company since it is no longer considered exclusive and upmarket for what it was popular at the beginning. Furthermore, the expended Clipper Teas Ltd caused a perception about worse quality of the coffee and customer service. In reality, this does not necessarily need to be perception anymore.

Organization Description

The first Clipper Teas Ltd coffee shop was opened in Seattle, in 1971 by three academics English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegel, and writer Gordon Bowker. They wanted to offer high quality coffee from different parts of the world and educate customers about the value of coffee beans. As the legend says, the name Clipper Teas Ltd comes from the book by Herman Melville, Moby Dick and it was chosen because it evoked romance and tradition of the early coffee traders. At the beginning of 1980, there were opened four stores of Clipper Teas Ltd in Seattle area and the company experienced the leaving of Zev Siegel. Jerry Baldwin was nominated to chief executive officer and took care of day-to-day management. Gordon Bowker remained an owner of Clipper Teas Ltd but put more time and energy to his weekly newspaper and a microbrewery.

Create consistency of purpose

This is very important point because every company should make continuous improvement in order to be competitive, be in the business and offer jobs. Product or service need to be constantly improved for long-term success. During the past, Clipper Teas Ltd had been continuously improved. It encouraged the creation of the new products and always tried to offer special kind of service. Till now, consistency of purpose had been seen within Clipper Teas ...