Ice Delights Case Study

Eric Porter Ice Delights Case Study B283 Case Analysis Ice Delights Case Study Introduction: Paul Rogers, Mark Daniel, and Eric Garfield are three friends from Harvard Business School who each throughout their own early jobs learned that they wanted to have more control over their lives. They knew they wanted to be their own bosses, make a lot of money, and make it doing something they loved doing. With such high demands it would take a lot of planning and researching to find the right type of business and most importantly how to run it. With so many variables they eventually concluded that they couldn’t wait long to start this venture or they would become too wrapped up in their own lives to do it. With this they also recognized they didn’t have the complete time and know how to make their business from scratch. Problem Analysis: -Major problems and challenges facing employees and organization: Finding funding was a particular dilemma. Paul, who had worked around many people with money, hoped that he could find someone who would be willing to cover their portion of the investment. They checked out the different offers from various franchises to see if Ice Delights was a good deal. It was true that it was a more expensive venture compared to many, but it also had a very good return rate despite that their business plan was not quite proven. Ice Delights was a very organized company, but it didn’t start out that way. After Bob and Andrew first purchased the two shops they attempted to expand it, but it expanded faster than they had thought and the organization dropped dramatically. They needed more time to get the system working right and time to work out the finances as well. With the extra growth they had fallen quite a bit behind so once they finally got everything working in order they became very committed to not letting it happen again. With this the three would need to give extensive persuasion to show Ice Delights that they were worth investing in. -What do “I” think the business is doing right and what do “I” think they need to change. A major mistake these guys made was to not research as much into the market they were going into. They were very unfamiliar with Florida and the locations for the businesses they wanted to run. Eric is the only one who has been to Florida and it was only for a summer vacation. When people are on vacation I think people are more willing to spend more money than when they are constantly living there which view could be clouding his judgment. Both Paul and Mark are worried about the deal, Mark a little more, but there is more at stake than Eric gives credit for. He feels that even if the business fails they still will have learned a lot and they would only be out $75,000 of their own money. But if they do fail all of Paul’s contacts will now be even more skeptic to invest in his entrepreneur ideas. And all of their names will be tarnished for their mistakes. Eric seems to have the least amount to lose which may be why he is willing to take the risks more. They also hadn’t researched their competition. There were plenty of well known places offering ice cream in many varieties. It was good that they wanted to expand and make more like a café with many other services. This could sustain them during different times of the day when ice cream may not be the top choice, but they are still missing many aspects from what culture they desire to any other services they want to offer specifically. They don’t even know how much they each want out of their business because if they figured out how much they each wanted, or were willing to settle with, then they could punch those numbers into the business model to see how much they would need to make to cover what they owed investors, Ice Delights franchise, and regular expenses. After finding how much they would have to sell they could then determine whether it was realistic and further determine if they should continue or not. Conclusion: If they are unable to finish crunching the numbers and finding out more about their future business then they should put things on hold. It would be a set back and probably a slight punch to some of their investors and Ice Delights for using up their time, but I feel that if they were to use their time wisely and search out their demographic as well as real estate, they would possibly gain even more respect from Ice Delights for having the same “cautious spirit” as they and with more paper to show the investors they would be more comfortable and willing to give more than just their verbal commitments.