The Clifton Review
The Clifton Review is a tri-weekly column that examines the question of the Clifton project along with the evolution of the war between two billionaires. We covered the start of this war with articles describing the battle over easement rights, the mysterious burning of a home, the blocks to rebuilding, and countless questionable court filings.
While the 2018 series salutes fashion mogul Peter Nygård’s Golden Jubilee detailing his rags to riches story, his incredible business success over these past fifty years and an inside look at how he did it, The Clifton Review will also continue to address current affairs as they relate to the good of The Bahamas.
SWOT Analysis Can Address Business Threats
By P.J. Malone
You’ve spotted some business risks on the horizon. Now what?
If you’ve done a SWOT analysis as we previously discussed, then you should have a clearer picture of your business situation.However, there are two important precursors once faced with business threats.
First of all, you have to develop the right mindset and always be vigilant. You have to decide not to give in to the challengesbecause challenges are a part of being in business.
The key to doing that is to not only know what constitutes a threat to your business in terms of your numbers and key indicators but to also not wait for the danger level to kick in before you create a plan to address it. As our grandmothers used to say, ‘a stitch in time saves nine’.
Secondly, you may want to consider becoming solution oriented in your thinking. Deciding that you will not give in to the challenges helps you to become more solution oriented. And, adecision to focus on finding a solution sends a message to your brain to focus on things that will work to resolve the situation as opposed to obsessing about any problems.
What happens next is totally dependent on the type of threat it is. Whatever it is though, it will require you to strategize to mitigate the risks to your business.
Now that you know what your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are from conducting your own SWOT analysis, they can be used to help you strategize.
To understand how to apply the SWOT analysis, let’s look closer at the example of fashion mogul Peter Nygard and the strategies he used to avert threats to his business a number of years ago.
The threat his business was under was that department stores were making a move toward showcasing a new product, which meant his product would possibly be squeezed out of featured floor space in department stores and possibly overtaken by competitors.
One of the first strategies he developed was based on him focusing on his company’s strength (the thing/s you are good at in operating your business). Their strength was that they were the best at their current product and had loyal customers who loved their product and still wanted it. So he created a way to increase sales in that area to offset any loses at the department store level.
Another strategy Nygard used was to focus on counterbalancinghis company’s weakness (those things that can get in the way of business growth or success). That weakness was the fact that he had a great polyester product, which made him ‘the king of polyester’, but it was only about polyester.
His strategy was to study the opportunity—which existed for everyone in the business—to get a better understanding of thistrend to move away from polyester. He discovered it was a true opportunity that had the potential to counteract his weakness of having one great core product.
In deciding on a strategy to create more core products, he used a combination of strengths. As a result of his habit of studying with the best and learning everything he needs to learn to become better at it than everybody else, Peter Nygard developedan in-depth understanding of fabrics to be able to create the company’s own signature fabrics.
With developing a strategy to develop a new product to compete with the move towards silk, he also used his organization’s assetof great product development processes for designing and delivering high quality well-designed products.
These strategies not only allowed him to avert the threat but to create an additional core silk product that was top of the line—sold in Saks Fifth Avenue at that time—and that had the Saks Fifth Avenue CEO singing his praises and commending him for his “product that is beautifully made with great fashions and creative genius”.