{"id":1457,"date":"2014-08-26T18:07:41","date_gmt":"2014-08-26T18:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.department99.com\/bobamter\/?page_id=1457"},"modified":"2017-03-16T15:31:08","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T15:31:08","slug":"case-study-micropoint-inc","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/?page_id=1457","title":{"rendered":"Case Study: Micropoint Inc."},"content":{"rendered":"

Micropoint Inc.<\/em><\/h2>\n

Sunnyvale, California<\/em><\/h2>\n

Situation & Problems:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Micropoint was privately owned and had lost sales, market share and money for three years. In 1971, the company was acquired by a large company. I was appointed President.<\/p>\n

Prior to BIC becoming the largest selling ballpoint pen in this country, three small manufacturers dominated the market – Lindy, Fischer, and Micropoint. Micropoint\u2019s core business had been high quality, commercial grade ballpoint pens sold to stationery wholesalers.<\/p>\n

Actions Taken and Results Achieved:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Restored Micropoint to profitability in 10 months by refocusing Micropoint\u2019s strategy to its profitable commercial core resulting in increased sales.<\/p>\n

Stopped the expensive and fruitless development of a BIC pen look alike and entry into the mass merchant, big box retail channel segment.<\/p>\n

Hired a national sales force of 125 commissioned manufacturers\u2019 reps specializing in the stationery channel segment. Retained two of the eight company salesmen to manage the rep organization.<\/p>\n

Retained an external agency to redesign the out-dated catalogs and packaging.<\/p>\n

Developed a new product – the telephone pen. This pen generated new sales and also helped reopen wholesalers that had dropped the core product line.<\/p>\n

Reduced salaried headcount.<\/p>\n

Reduced cost of sales by implementing work simplification to improve through-put. Routings were changed. Direct labor content was reduced.<\/p>\n

Eliminated approximately 25% of the model numbers with low sales.<\/p>\n

Established a quality control function. Testing the finished pens had been stopped by prior management. Scrap and customer returns were reduced.<\/p>\nTweet<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Micropoint Inc. Sunnyvale, California Situation & Problems: Micropoint was privately owned and had lost sales, market share and money for three years. In 1971, the company was acquired by a large company. I was appointed President. Prior to BIC becoming the largest selling ballpoint pen in this country, three small manufacturers dominated the market – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1457","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1457"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1637,"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1457\/revisions\/1637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobamter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}