Han Department Store Case Summary

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Hansen Department store is a regional department store chain headquartered in Minneapolis. It has 250 stores located throughout the Midwest. It was founded in 1934, making this an 82-year-old company. During the Great Recession, its revenue was also affected. Annual revenue had declined from a peak of $985 million in 2007 to $895 million in 2010. As a result, the Board of Directors fired long-time CEO William Jacobs just 18 months before set to retire in order to turn around the sales decline. Then Hansen brought in Steve Wilmer, a former President of the Retail Division for Amazon.com. During his first month, he made countless changes within the company, including discontinuing most of the sales promotion events, firing the long-time advertising …show more content…
He had held practically every management in the company for over 30 years. It was widely assumed in the company that he would become the CEO when William Jacobs retired in 2012. He was afraid that creating mini-stores featuring expensive lines would alienate Hansen’s core target market of middle-income families. Because of the disagreement with the new statistics of the company, Ronald Blake was fired. However, the company continued to struggle. Hansen was sued by another department store over the use of their spokesperson, who was still under contract. Due to the continuous drop in sales, it was clear to everyone that Wilmer 's vision of a turnaround was not working. Therefore, it is time for them to come up with a new strategy to win them back. Part of that strategy may include finding a new …show more content…
Although Mr. Wilmer had a lot of experience in the retail division, he worked for amazon, an online based company. The marketing needs of an online based company and the marketing needs of a retail store are much different. He may have had some good ideas, but he was not familiar with the needs of the Hanson retail stores. Over the past couple quarters, the sales have not improved, but have actually gotten even worse with Wilmer’s new marketing strategies. In the meantime, the company should bring back Ronald Blake (assuming he will agree). Mr. Blake had worked at Hansen for over 30 years. He had an obvious commitment to the company and might be very happy to serve as a temporary CEO. He clearly has a good idea of all the strengths and weakness of the company. He felt that the company was going in the wrong direction as soon and Mr. Wilmer started to make these drastic changes. The main problem with the changes that were made is that he had changed the target market. If the Hanson department stores want to be successful again they need to get back to being more affordable for the everyday shopper. To appeal to the everyday shopper they need to close down the luxury boutiques that they had opened. During this time in the economy, the average buyer is not going to be looking for luxury jewelry or high-end and high priced clothing. The next step would be to bring back the promotional events. In

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