Reference no: EM132303595

Ernie Grimaldi runs the Grimaldi Candy Company located in the town of Sibley. Ernie’s attitude toward running the business leaves much to be desired. He believes in “flying by the seat of my pants.” He doesn’t believe in “wasting” time by sitting down and forming strategies. For example, every Christmas the company loses countless sales because Ernie is too cheap to spend much money on advertising. He figures that the company name will “draw” people to their door. The most he’ll permit is the passing out of flyers--which are printed on the company’s outdated copy machines--in front of the factory. Additionally, at certain times of year, like Valentine’s Day, the factory habitually runs out of candy because employees take vacations or machinery is down for servicing and consequently, production can’t meet demand. Currently, a local environmental group is planning to picket the factory because it uses a lot of water from Rock Bottom Creek which is then dumped back into the creek contaminated with milk, butter, and machine oil. The creek omits foul odors and much of the fish downstream have died. Ernie doesn’t want to spend the money to update the facility where it could return cleaned water to the creek. He’s garnering significant bad press from this issue. Ernie currently only hires part-time employees because he doesn’t want to provide them with health benefits as required by Sibley law for fulltime employees. Only 10% of his workforce is fulltime and turnover is high. The average part-time employee only stays about 6 months. Due to the fact that their pay is so low, most of the employees see the Grimaldi jobs as a paycheck and couldn’t care less about the company. Ernie is so cheap that he makes his bookkeeper, Celine, prepare his taxes. Celine doesn’t know what she’s doing and Bernie suspects that he might be overpaying his taxes. He also goes to Celine for financial advice and much of the information that he’s given is not helpful.

Ernie comes to see you and spells out his troubles. What specific business strategies would you employ to help him turn his company around.

Instructions: Each student MUST answer the scenario in approximately 250-300 words. A student may exceed 300 words in the essay.