In the fall of 2013, after returning to Los Angeles from New York, Beall turned her attention to the development of systems for more effective hiring and retention. She brought on a senior director of opera-tions, a regional manager for Southern California, and two full-time field supervisors. She brought in part-time consultants to serve as CFO and to provide marketing support. She also began to be more pro-active about hiring for fit—working with her senior managers to identify and carefully train a large team of technicians likely to remain with the company.Freed by her senior staff to turn away from the minutiae and focus on higher level strategy, she began exploring her options. As a first step, she started conducting extensive research about if and how CleanBeeBaby might be turned into a fran-chise operation. Beall had long believed that there might be huge upside in franchising; residential cleaning franchisor Merry Maids had 1,432 operating units globally (2014 data), for example, while Molly Maids had 632 (2010 data). When she further factored in the many unsolicited inquiries that she received from prospective franchisees worldwide, her confi-dence increased. She initiated the legal paperwork and process to become a franchisor. On the heels of taking this step, she closed an angel funding round for $500,000 (with an expressed investor interest in a subsequent investment for the same amount).She also began to pursue work with Nordstrom, after a buyer contacted her to see if CleanBeeBaby might partner with them on an in-store promo-tion. They proposed, specifically, a test in which they would pay for a fixed number of cleanings to be offered as free gifts with purchased strollers. In October, the pilot program ran, with great success, in three Southern California branches. Four more events followed in May 2014. On the heels of this second success, Nordstrom asked Beall to scale her efforts to encompass 17 stores in Southern California. They also expressed a desire, over the longer term, to expand the program nationally. In parallel with this, Beall began communicating with Babies “R” Us about other in-store concepts.As the summer of 2014 drew to a close, Beall found herself confronted with a number of significant growth options. Which to choose and how to priori-tize those options were foremost in her mind, always with an eye to retaining her own work-life balance. Her vision clearly included the formal establishment of a franchise offering. But creating that offering came with many executional decisions. How much should they charge? What sort of person consti-tuted a high potential franchisee? Should she start by pursuing the hundreds of unsolicited franchisee Inquiries already received—or by targeted market-ing to candidates? Which geographic regions, if any, should she choose to assign to franchisees? Which might she keep corporate-owned? How should those locations be chosen? She hoped to sell two or three franchises by the end of 2014—and to have between 10 and 15 by the end of 2015.Not content to stop there, she wondered how she might build out other revenue streams to make the business more robust and long-lived. She had begun, in Los Angeles, to experiment with stroller repair as well as cleaning; she had begun to clean other items too. Maybe it was time to launch her own clean-ing product line—one that was eco-friendly and organic like the others, but whose profits would fuel her own business. If not that, or maybe at the same time, her growing profile as a baby expert (she had received significant press coverage in outlets such as Entrepreneur magazine and MSNBC) suggested that she might be able to start charging for items previously secured through barter—including long-term product sponsorships and retail relationships. She began to wonder, for example, if she could stop providing her services to boutiques for free and instead request a commission on sales achieved on CleanBeeBaby days. For retailers like Nordstrom and Babies “R” Us, she wondered if she should start exploring the possibility of dedicated in-store ser-vice centers. Question: 1 .Of the many options available to Beall at the end of the case, which should she pursue in the short-term? Why? How? 2. Is CleanBeeBaby the right name for the business?

In the fall of 2013, after returning to Los Angeles from New York, Beall turned her attention to the development of systems for more effective hiring and retention. She brought on a senior director of opera-tions, a regional manager for Southern California, and two full-time field supervisors. She brought in part-time consultants to serve as CFO and to provide marketing support. She also began to be more pro-active about hiring for fit—working with her senior managers to identify and carefully train a large team of technicians likely to remain with the company.Freed by her senior staff to turn away from the minutiae and focus on higher level strategy, she began exploring her options. As a first step, she started conducting extensive research about if and how CleanBeeBaby might be turned into a fran-chise operation. Beall had long believed that there might be huge upside in franchising; residential cleaning franchisor Merry Maids had 1,432 operating units globally (2014 data), for example, while Molly Maids had 632 (2010 data). When she further factored in the many unsolicited inquiries that she received from prospective franchisees worldwide, her confi-dence increased. She initiated the legal paperwork and process to become a franchisor. On the heels of taking this step, she closed an angel funding round for $500,000 (with an expressed investor interest in a subsequent investment for the same amount).She also began to pursue work with Nordstrom, after a buyer contacted her to see if CleanBeeBaby might partner with them on an in-store promo-tion. They proposed, specifically, a test in which they would pay for a fixed number of cleanings to be offered as free gifts with purchased strollers. In October, the pilot program ran, with great success, in three Southern California branches. Four more events followed in May 2014. On the heels of this second success, Nordstrom asked Beall to scale her efforts to encompass 17 stores in Southern California. They also expressed a desire, over the longer term, to expand the program nationally. In parallel with this, Beall began communicating with Babies “R” Us about other in-store concepts.As the summer of 2014 drew to a close, Beall found herself confronted with a number of significant growth options. Which to choose and how to priori-tize those options were foremost in her mind, always with an eye to retaining her own work-life balance. Her vision clearly included the formal establishment of a franchise offering. But creating that offering came with many executional decisions. How much should they charge? What sort of person consti-tuted a high potential franchisee? Should she start by pursuing the hundreds of unsolicited franchisee Inquiries already received—or by targeted market-ing to candidates? Which geographic regions, if any, should she choose to assign to franchisees? Which might she keep corporate-owned? How should those locations be chosen? She hoped to sell two or three franchises by the end of 2014—and to have between 10 and 15 by the end of 2015.Not content to stop there, she wondered how she might build out other revenue streams to make the business more robust and long-lived. She had begun, in Los Angeles, to experiment with stroller repair as well as cleaning; she had begun to clean other items too. Maybe it was time to launch her own clean-ing product line—one that was eco-friendly and organic like the others, but whose profits would fuel her own business. If not that, or maybe at the same time, her growing profile as a baby expert (she had received significant press coverage in outlets such as Entrepreneur magazine and MSNBC) suggested that she might be able to start charging for items previously secured through barter—including long-term product sponsorships and retail relationships. She began to wonder, for example, if she could stop providing her services to boutiques for free and instead request a commission on sales achieved on CleanBeeBaby days. For retailers like Nordstrom and Babies “R” Us, she wondered if she should start exploring the possibility of dedicated in-store ser-vice centers. Question: 1 .Of the many options available to Beall at the end of the case, which should she pursue in the short-term? Why? How? 2. Is CleanBeeBaby the right name for the business?

Management, Loose-Leaf Version

13th Edition

ISBN:9781305969308

Author:Richard L. Daft

Publisher:Richard L. Daft

Chapter12: Managing Human Talent

Section: Chapter Questions

Problem 3OTJVC

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