My Father's Strategy

When i was six years old, my father decided to make a leap and start his own business. It was a simple idea and for the first fifteen or so years he was basically the only company in Utah and Salt Lake County the focussed strictly on concrete removal.
At first his strategy was to both tear-out and replace concrete, but he soon changed his focus to tear-out in an attempt to gain the loyalty of the other concrete finishers that you can find everywhere; it worked and for almost 17 years he never had enough time to do all of the work that everyone was sending him.
At first, looking at it from the Porter's Five Forces:
Rivalry- there was none to speak of.
Supplier Power- no real power, they were happy to sale the machines for below MSRP.
Customer Power- none to speak of, who wants to remove a driveway with a sledge hammer? Or they could simply live with the inconvenience of a crummy driveway.
Substitutions - hardly any. the only to even worth mentioning was concrete lifters, but they were almost as much as a replacing.
Barrier to Entry- This is the only real risk he had. The only barrier was the $60,000 to get started.

Overtime the market changed, other contractors started to see haw quickly my father could earn his couple thousand and started to enter the market.
Recently, the rivalry changed.
Rivalry- is high, there are a lot of small companies that remove concrete for residential customers and most every large company has a removal division now days.
My father and I discussed the problem and sought a way to differentiate Ben-Crete from all of the other Removal companies. The solution was to integrate two separate industries: the removal industry and the trash dumpster industry.
By expanding to buy a heavy duty dumpster truck we were able to increase the amount of removal we could do to nearly 250%.
We recognized that most of our work day was wasted running the load of removed concrete to the dump, and waiting for the dump truck to be loaded. By expanding we were able to pull onto a job, drop the first bin and equipment, and run for another bin. Meanwhile the other worker would load the first bin and prepare either for the next bin or the next job.
This expansion also opened up a new revenue pool of trash, that many contractors loved because our bins were shorter, but could hold just as much as any other trash company, not to mention they never worried about the weight because the truck was legal for nearly twice as much as the other companies.
Today our investment of has paid off. the truck paid for itself in one year and now with the slow economy the trash has become nearly our main business each week.


There was

An Apple Strategy

So, I read the Harvard review article from yesterday, "Apple's Greatness, and its Shame." As I read my mind kept returning to the fact that this is a prime example of the weakness of the suppliers power and Porter's five forces.
I thought, there are two ways to look at this situation. First, was to take the view of the author, and say that Apple has the power to dictate to companies what they do and how they do it. Somehow inferring that because of Apple's size, they should take full responsibility for the actions of their suppliers half way around the world. Was the author making a plea for the Chinese labor force, the Chinese people? Or was he looking to make Apple raise it labor costs from $10 an iPhone to $30 an iPhone. At which point taking shipping and taxes into account would it be more feasible for Apple to return its labor force mainly to the US. Or would it simply open up a competitive advantage for other hardware producers, not held to so high a standard to get an edge into the market. In which case, this humanitarian plea for the Chinese worker could possibly hurt the very workers it is trying to help.
Or secondly, I believe that Apple is like most every other business in the world. They look fo what can produce the most profits. So I believe that the responsibility should not be put on Apple, and it should not be put on the consumer either. The responsibility should be left where it rightfully is "IN THE HANDS OF THE SUPPLIERS THEMSELVES!" Why? Why do people, Americans particularly, believe that they can push responsibility to those that they believe can afford the weight of the responsibility. We all deserve to, and should have the right to claim accountability for our actions. The suppliers should be held responsible, the workers should be held responsible and no one else. The author was looking at the Chinese working condition from his own viewpoint. Obviously, if the worker's lifestyle wasn't increasing at all they would revolt, which eventually through the natural course of things, they will. And they will be stronger because of it. I believe that the American people are weak because we feel entitled, because everything has been given to us from the hardships of our forebears. It would go completely against all business strategy to demand that suppliers increase their labor cost to charge us more.
I believe that it is not Apple's responsible to force their suppliers into action. They are responsible to find a strategy to make money for themselves, that is business. Apple strives produce high end, innovative hardware with the highest posible margins. Without such margins, how could Apple afford to spend million's every year in R&D.