Reference no: EM131953274
small business management class:
Please answer the three questions from the article below
Q1) Which one of the five Ps of entrepreneurial behavior is best illustrated in the article? Explain why. ?
Q2) Which one of the five entrepreneurial operational competencies is best illustrated in the article? Explain how you know. ?
Q3) Which one of the many advantages of small, family-owned businesses and which one of the two challenges typical to family businesses are best illustrated in the article? Explain why. ?
The article:
OAK PARK, Ill. -- Sandhill Christmas Trees here sells fewer than 5,000 firs in a typical holiday season but in 2010 it sold nearly 6,000, many as last-minute deliveries to retailers who had underestimated demand.
"Dad would be proud that we went out and had a record year," said John Brussock, who at age 24 just completed his rookie season as chief executive of Sandhill after taking over for the founder, his father, James Brussock, who died earlier in 2010.
Sandhill's success mirrors that of tree farms across the U.S.
Precise numbers won't be available until late winter, when the National Christmas Tree Association completes its annual survey. But after two flat seasons, tree-farm associations in the biggest-producing states say members are estimating an industrywide sales jump in the mid- to high single digits over a year earlier, with some growers reporting larger gains.
"At times during the season, we had growers reporting increases of 20% to 40%," said Brian Ostlund, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Association, whose territory includes Oregon, the nation's largest producer of Christmas trees.
With annual sales under $2 billion, the Christmas tree is a small but nevertheless telling economic indicator because when incomes fall, people tend to forgo buying trees, economists say.
"Better sales would be a good supporting indicator for better consumer sentiment," said Michael Swanson, agricultural economist for Wells Fargo & Co.
At Sandhill, the 2010 sales boost also reflects a son's determination to embrace a family business his father called "an out-of-control hobby."
Like many Christmas-tree farmers, the elder Mr. Brussock got into it as a sideline. The owner of a kitchen-remodeling business in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, James Brussock decided about 30 years ago to start growing Christmas trees on 200 acres he owned in southern Wisconsin.
The project required endless toil -- planting, fertilizing, shearing -- with no quick payoff because the first crop of trees took eight years to mature. Even after sales took off, the burly, white-bearded Mr. Brussock limited the operation's growth so it wouldn't interfere with his day job.
Yet growing and selling Christmas trees gave him great pleasure. A devoted outdoorsman, he loved working fields of Frasers and Balsams. Selling the trees from the asphalt parking lot of his remodeling firm, he also treasured the local renown it brought his family.
"Our kids just know the Brussocks as the Christmas-tree people," said Lisa Hendrix, an Oak Park schoolteacher who has been buying Brussock trees for years.
Even as a toddler, John Brussock worked the farm and sold trees alongside his dad. But after graduating with an economics degree from the University of Wisconsin, he took a job selling commercial real estate in Chicago. In 2008, his father manned the tree lot alone.
John, missing the outdoors and physical work, returned the next year and started an online sales business. His father was delighted. "I don't know that there's anything better in life than working with your son," Mr. Brussock said in interviews for an article published in 2009 in The Wall Street Journal.
In early 2009, the elder Mr. Brussock was diagnosed with bile-duct cancer. Doctors predicted it would kill him before Labor Day. "I want another Christmas," his wife, Kitty, recalled him saying.
James and John worked the sales lot together through the 2009 holidays. This summer, they tended trees side-by-side in the fields. "I was shearing with him, and that is hot, strenuous work," said John Brussock.
His father died Sept. 4 at the age of 65.
The younger Mr. Brussock intends to make a full-time career out of Christmas trees, as his father had dreamed of doing. Thanks to his dad, John said, "Christmas trees are my passion."
With a farm planted with 75,000 trees, John Brussock aims to more than triple Sandhill sales over the next few years by increasing both Internet and wholesale revenue. "There are always new people opening Christmas-tree lots, and we have a reputation for quality trees," he said.
Before his father died, John Brussock peppered him with questions on things like the per-acre formula for spraying herbicide. But some business details got lost. One recent day, Mr. Brussock wondered where his father stored the spare tire for a tree-hauling trailer. He reached for his cellphone to call his dad, only to remember he was now on his own.