Mrs Fields Cookies Essay

Mrs. handle biscuits was founded by Debbi handle in the late 1970s. She and her husband Randy Fields undefended their first bloodline in 1977 in Palo Alto, California, selling home do- modality cookies which quickly grew in popularity. ProductsMrs. Fields Cookies came in 14 varieties. All baked products were made on premises in the individual stores and the connection especially focused on the fresh cookies. If the cookies are non sold within two hours, they were given everyplace away and discarded. CompetitorsMrs. Fields competitors included New Yorks Davids Cookies, battle of Atlantas Original Great American Chocolate splinter Cookie Company, and the Nestle Companys Original Cookie Co. Challenges 1. Low barriers to origination and mall locations competition In the early 1980s, cookies were cheap to make and the barriers of agreeable snack industry to entry were low. There were many cookies producers and many consumers in the market, and no lineage had total control over the market price. Because just about 80% of Mrs. Fields outlets were in shopping malls, so the competition for the just about favorable mall locations was fierce.2. Franchising Financing and performance of exchange market Mrs. Fields had consistently refused to franchise their stores, because she viewed franchising as a loss of control over the end product and loss of touch with the customers. To find bank funding and additional capital for expansion, Mrs. Fields tried to go public and made initial public offering on the London exchange in 1986, but this experience was not successful, because buyers did not know the company and did not believe that Mrs. Fields business could be sustained growth without franchising. The dissolver was that the stock price rose slowly.Business StrategyOrganizational system Mrs. Fields had a non-hierarchy organization with de centralized decision making. Typically, there was no official organization chart in company which means Mrs. Fields wan ted to take advantage of the intelligence and trust the judgment of employee throughout the company, instead of relying on a small set of decision makers. The employees at Mrs. Fields were given much more responsibilities such as topical anaesthetic marketing decisions were made by the regional and district managers, because they needed to be able to respond quickly to the demands of target customers. Mrs. Fields withal boost employees to be wacky and personable, so that customers feel comfortable purchasing cookies. The company placed high value on employees by using get ahead from within dodge, employees were rewarded for their performance with a bonus system.Information System dodgeInformation technology played a very grand federal agency at Mrs. Fields. MIS enabled Mrs. Fields to have network structure and use centralized development system out of Utah and distribute it to every store as needed. Mrs. Fields approach of breeding technology was consistent with an ad-hoc l ive/benefit analysis. All stores were running under implementation of information systems at Mrs. Fields to promote sales and control wear out and cookies cost. Mrs. Fields also believed that it was not necessary to expand staff to accommodate business growth, and little groups of people at Mrs. Fields could make decision to solve business problems faster and better if people could work very well with the information technology to develop more new and creative applications, because a profitable information system in company could save time and labor cost, and make business operations more accurate, effective and efficient.Operations schemeFirst, Mrs. Fields used very friendly and organized design style for their stores to attract more customers. Customers always were drawn into the store by the openness of the design and by the aroma of hot cookies fresh from the ovens. Second, sophisticated steering information system also played a very important role on the business operatio ns. Store management system intentional by Randy and the MIS organization was incorporated with each business answer for day planning, production schedule, time clocks, store accounting, inventory, interview scheduling, skill interrogatory and electronic mail. Controller at headquarter in Utah was also integrated with system collecting sales information received from all stores. The information system helped controller in generating reports for management review.Expanded store strategy/ diversification strategyFrom 1980s, Mrs. Fields started a series of achievements to expand their businesses including a 119-store French Bakery/sandwich chain, La Pette Boulangerie and Famous Chocolate Chip Company. These acquisitions brought a combination of full lines of both cookies and bakery products and presented an opportunity to mutilate out a niche in a highly fractionalized market, and the sizing of the operation constituted an investment barrier to competition. But the same time, the acquisition also brought many of overhead functions into the existing organization, including accounting, finance, personnel, human resources, etc.