Question: In your final year of University, you created a company that designs and manufactures trendy dres...
In your final year of University, you created a company that designs and manufactures trendy dresses that appeal to 15 to 25-year-old market. To start your company, each of your parents provided some start-up capital.
Your dresses are of a very good quality, and have fun slogans printed on them. Your best sellers include the ‘YOLO’ and ‘Shake it off’. An interesting feature of your t-shirts is that they are carbon neutral – that is, the company has pledged to offset any carbon emissions in the production process by funding carbon projects in Melbourne that lead to the prevention of greenhouse gas emissions. Each dress has a tag on it, which states the amount of carbon emissions released into the atmosphere to produce the dresses, and how this has been offset. The quality of the dresses, the slogans and the carbon neutrality goal have made the dresses extremely popular – in fact, demand is outstripping supply tenfold.
The business has been operating in Melbourne for some time. All dresses are designed and manufactured in your Brunswick headquarters, and are sold through several local retail outlets. You are now looking to expand into new markets internationally. You are of the opinion that you will need to outsource the manufacture of your dresses to compete in the international market – it is the only way you can increase production volume and be price competitive. You have been advised by an international business expert that you should outsource production to Philippines
e. Consider four potential challenges you might face in outsourcing production to a manufacturing company in the Philippines How will you address these challenges? You could consider differences in cultural dimensions, communication practices and negotiation processes between Australia and Philippines, or issues of control and decision-making, in your answer.
f. Identify the concerns of the local Philippine community regarding your operations there. What plans do you have to deal with their concerns and to ensure a long-term cooperative relationship?