a reprieve in Fort Madison?

[randyholhut]

The Hawk Eye in Burlington, Iowa, recently reported that Bic is planning on keeping the Sheaffer plant in Fort Madison open through May, and is considering keeping several of the departments at the plant open beyond that for up to another two years.

 

The original URL for the Hawk Eye story is no longer working, but the MSNBC news site has a reprint of the story at:

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11022609/from/RL.1/

 

Maybe Bic sees the value in keeping the Fort Madison plant (and all the penmaking mojo it contains) running. They may be able to make pens cheaper elsewhere, but the Sheaffer loyalists know that it really isn't a Sheaffer pen unless it comes from Fort Madison.

[contravox]

My money is that Bic will want to keep the customer service department open. Any takers?

[npt3]

Read the story. >Basically< it looks like everything except pen making/assembly will stay.

[DRP]

Newspaper article suggests that nib manufacturing will remain in Fort Madison. Will be interesting to monitor this situation to see what actually happens.

[tryphon]

I am ready to bet that the palnt will stay open into 2007. Any takers?

[DRP]

There are three quotes from the Burlington Hawk Eye article which caught my attention from representatives of Sheaffer's new owner:

 

" ..synergizing .. remaining .. operations within Bic."

 

".. face increasing challenges ..."

 

".. focused on shutting down .. "

 

Did anyone notice the absence of the terms, "quality" or "customers?"

 

If quotes in the Burlington Hawk Eye's article are representative of Bic's thinking, it would suggest that Sheaffer's new owner has lost sight of their primary objective: that being to satisfy customers. They, like so many other large companies which have gone astray become more internally focused than on achieving recurring revenues. In short, they become more interested in what they want to sell than on what customers want to buy.

 

The marketplace is littered with such failures as Schlitz beer and even IBM and Xerox; companies which thought they had the world by the tail but later failed (or at least lost sizable market share) because of their refusal to respond to customer expectations.

 

If you're wondering why I mention IBM, there was an excellent book which came out about a dozen years ago (I think it was called, Big Blues) by a Wall Street Journal reporter which documented how IBM tried to slow the development of personal computers -- despite the fact that IBM had invented the very first practical PC, because of a fear that PCs would eat into IBM's mega profitable mainframe business. Competitors didn't have that worry so ate IBM for lunch. Xerox dominated the copier business but in an effort to maximize short term profits, downgraded their service department. I personally kicked Xerox out of two businesses when I couldn't get repair work performed in a timely manner.

 

Will Bic be the next Schlitz? You can't tell solely from an article in the Burlington Hawk Eye, but if the few quotes are any indication, I fear that Sheaffer's new owners have lost sight of what customers want: quality.

 

The quality pen market is outside of Bic's core competency -- they've demonstrated that all too clearly already. The question is whether they will recover and adapt or react to a changing marketplace like Eastern Air Lines.

 

Any business is only as good as what the customers think.

 

Side note: I've seen the Burlington Hawk Eye and it is a good paper which covers a fairly large corner of southeast Iowa; Fort Madison is about ten miles south of Burlington.