Established in 1929, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group (CTF) was not only among the most popular brands in the Chinese-speaking world but also one of the largest jewellry retailers in the world with over 7,400 points of sale, mainly in Mainland China, generating Group revenue about US$5 billion in early 2023.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and rising macro-economic headwinds, how did CTF achieve a resilient business performance? Two strategies based on retail expansion and smart retailing which automated the order fulfillment process and enhanced customer shopping experiences proved successful. Moreover, elevated product offerings through brand differentiation targeting different market segments such as high-end luxury, mass luxury and youth were also implemented.
As of 2023, would CTF’s strategy be robust enough to face the continuing economic and political challenges? Should it continue to expand? And is its current brand portfolio too broad?
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KOODESIGN was founded in Hong Kong by Larry Koo and Natalie Chan in 2017. From its base in Hong Kong, KOODESIGN has managed global design projects for clients around the world, such as Philips, Whirlpool, and Softbank. All of those product designs then needed to be manufactured and brought to market. Accordingly, KOODESIGN also developed its Go-to-Market strategy to facilitate the process of moving a product from a design concept to a finished product ready to be launched in the market. KOODESIGN’s latest project was the design of an Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) for a major, new client, Eaton, a global conglomerate with US$20 billion in annual sales. The product called the ATS MATSN was to be manufactured in China and was intended for the mainland China market.
As the product design lead for KOODESIGN, Larry interacted extensively with Studio Blue, Eaton’s human-centric design team, and studied the Eaton Designer’s Guide to Visual Brand Language (VBL) that Studio Blue had shared with KOODESIGN. Natalie, on the other hand, had been in close communication with the ATS MATSN project team in China, which included product development, as well as sales and marketing. They also provided input on product design.
Over the course of the interactions that Larry and Natalie had with the respective parties, it became apparent that the priorities of the design team in the USA and the product development and manufacturing teams in China were not necessarily aligned. While KOODESIGN had an established Go-to-Market strategy, implementing that strategy varied across projects depending on the stakeholders involved in each project and their respective priorities. It was necessary, therefore, for Larry and Natalie to further vet the priorities of the parties involved with the ATS MATSN project and ensure that key elements of Eaton’s VBL were not compromised while also ensuring that the product could be manufactured and assembled in a cost-effective manner so as to be competitive in the China market.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Larry Koo, the co-founder and creative lead of KOODESIGN, needed to come up with a plan to complete a client’s project from design all the way to market within six months for a robotic device equipped with disinfectants. Given such a tight project schedule and the high client’s expectations of quality, Larry realized that he was indeed in a race against time and would need to think differently to fast track this project to meet the client’s deadline. Larry decided to fast track this project by adjusting some of the initial task duration and start time as well as the sequence specifications. By concurrently completing tasks that would normally be completed sequentially, Larry hoped to compress the project duration just enough time to meet the client’s launch date. However, fast tracking a project would also create a higher chance of resource overloading problems that Larry needed to address since his design studio’s resources were limited.
Davis Bookhart, the founding director of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s Sustainability/Net Zero office has an HKD 50 million problem. Four years ago, a fund was created to build a position of institutional leadership in sustainability from the largesse of the university’s then president. Intended to pair students with research faculty and the university’s operations staff in the development of sustainable, smart solutions to campus problems, the resultant program transformed the university’s campus works into a living lab, offering an exploration of frontier problems in sustainability and an alternate pedagogical model to classroom teaching. Four years on, over 30 projects have been funded, with outcomes ranging from digitalizing the school’s registrar to using artificial intelligence to build a smart monitoring system for the campus’ bird population. Now, under new leadership and with its funding set to soon expire, Bookhart must reevaluate the living lab’s impact and address how the case for a living lab might be institutionalized. He must also grapple with a broader question of what the role of the university will be in supporting early-stage innovation in China’s now emerging Greater Bay Area?
The case documents Fu Sheng Gardening, a Taiwanese flower company that transformed from a wholesaler to a retailer, facing challenges and opportunities. The case suits undergraduate and graduate students taking Operations and Supply Chain Management courses. To answer the case questions, students should apply knowledge in global supply chains, perishable goods, sustainability, e-commerce, supply chain risk, dual-channel supply chains, and transportation. The case can be used for an independent discussion session of 90 minutes to integrate students' learning.
This case is set in the last quarter of 2022. Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA), the renowned global supplier of electric vehicles (EV), was one of the most talked about companies in the media, partly because the company’s cofounder, director, and CEO, Elon Musk, took over Twitter for USD44bn in October 2022. Aiming to turn around Twitter’s profitability, Musk carried a bathroom sink to Twitter’s headquarters and let the management and staff members “sink in” the idea of massive layoffs. However, his reform plans and public vote result of Twitter’s users resulted in a backlash. On 20 December 2022, Musk tweeted he would resign as CEO of Twitter once a replacement was found.
On 24 December 2022, Tesla suspended its EV production in its Gigafactory Shanghai, its second largest plant, without providing an explanation to the public. It was believed the suspension was due to the surge in COVID-19 cases, and the slower demand for Tesla vehicles in the Chinese market.
Musk and his companies had a few turbulent years, dramatic success and painful failures, as well as inspiring vision and self-inflicted wounds. Now, even some of his most enthusiastic supporters were beginning to question his leadership. For the 12 months of 2022, the NASDAQ Composite Index experienced a 33.89% drop, and Tesla’s share price fell by 69.2% after closing at USD123.18 on 30 December 2022.
Whether Musk’s leadership performance was related to his recently revealed diagnosis of Asperger syndrome was being questioned. Could his Asperger’s partly explain both his visionary genius and his irrational behavior? Did Musk’s Asperger personality features contribute to his interest in Twitter, thus distracting him from Tesla? Did his unique personality profile affect his questionable management decisions? Musk’s lack of focus on Tesla was blamed for a dramatic stock value downturn, and questions about his future fit as the primary steward of Tesla was becoming an issue for the Tesla board and Tesla’s investors.
Both enterprise blockchain and tokenization projects use distributed ledger technologies (DLT) as the underlying infrastructure; but developing and managing them are in fact very different. This case focuses on CryptoBLK, a Hong Kong-based solution provider that has developed a wide range of DLT software applications for its clients in trade finance, supply chain and logistics, and has later expanded to tokenization businesses.
This case gives an opportunity for students to identify and discuss the differences between enterprise blockchain and tokenization projects in terms of client profiles, project goals, required services, time spans, revenue streams and specific programming languages used.
Students can learn how to make strategic short-term and long-term decisions. In making short-term decisions, students can consider how to strike a balance between enterprise blockchain and tokenization businesses in terms of investing and staffing. In making long-term decisions, as tokenization is an emerging trend with high potential, students have the opportunity to discuss how CryptoBLK should position itself in the industry, e.g., as an end-to-end tokenization service provider or only as a technical service provider. Moreover, students can consider how CryptoBLK can leverage existing and potential clients in local and regional consortiums, international DLT trade finance consortia and token-specific companies to develop a sustainable business model
After studying this case, students can not only understand the concepts of private and public blockchains but also discuss their differences from a project management perspective. Students will also be able to make strategic decisions on developing business models involving emerging technologies.
Lumière Project, a Hong Kong-based company, uses blockchain technology and smart contracts to offer finance solutions to the filmmaking industry. Founded by Patrice Poujol, Lumière relies on Elemis, its ERP platform prototype using blockchain technology, to help finance media projects and increase capital flow transparency and control for movie investors, cast, and crews. With the initial success of its B2B business and from the end of 2020, Lumière has designed and started developing NFT and Lumiverse solutions in the hope of opening the gates to the wider B2C arena for film financing, production, and distribution. But developing B2C business is considered as a bold move for Poujol and his team. To make the expansion into B2C a success, they need to raise additional capital and cope with a range of technical, regulatory, and market risks and challenges.
This case describes B2B and B2C use cases of blockchain technologies and smart contracts in the filmmaking industry. By illustrating how Lumière works, this case shows how blockchain technologies and smart contracts improve transparency and accountability in the film payment process, bringing digital transformation in to the filmmaking industry. It provides a good opportunity for students to assess the benefits and challenges of using blockchain and smart technologies. Students will also learn not only how NFTs can create business value but also how to cope with the challenges associated with the use of NFTs, such as legal and regulatory concerns, the valuation difficulties and the efforts to attract the interest of the target audience.
Moreover, this case provides an opportunity for students to learn different ways that start-ups can raise capital to run businesses. Besides traditional funding options, Lumière provides an opportunity to consider tokenization-related alternatives. Students can compare pros and cons of each funding option based on a real-world case.
After studying this case, students will understand how to analyze the benefits and challenges of applying blockchain technologies and smart contracts and how to raise funding for IT-related start-ups.
This case is set in 2021; Kingold Jewelry, Inc. (武汉金凰珠宝股份有限公司) (NASDAQ: KGJI), was one of mainland China’s largest gold processors and gold jewelry manufacturers. In 2002, Jia Zhihong (贾志宏), chairman and CEO, founded the company, which was based in Wuhan, Hubei Province. In August 2010, it was listed on NASDAQ using “backdoor listing.” It sold gold jewelry, ornaments, and investment-oriented products. Between 2015 and 2020, Jia decided to increase Kingold’s reliance on gold as collateral to obtain loans at around CNY20.6bn (USD3.2bn) from 14 Chinese commercial banks and trusts across different provinces, including China Minsheng Trust Co. Ltd., Hengfeng Bank, and Dongguan Trust Co. Ltd. The 83 tonnes gold bars were largely secured physically in bank vaults after independent testing institutions certified them and insurance companies examined them; other financial institutions did not have access to the gold bars.
In late 2019, Kingold defaulted on a loan repayment to Dongguan Trust, and in February 2020, the bank demanded to liquidate the collateral and discovered the fraud. In June 2020, a Beijing-based financial news outlet, Caixin, published a story about Kingold’s counterfeit gold scandal that was initiated by Dongguan Trust and other defaulted loan cases. On 11 August 2020, Kingold filed for voluntary delisting from NASDAQ without filing its overdue financial reports. On 26 August 2021, the Wuhan court began to press charges against Jia and Kingold, and detained Jia and other personnel.
How could Kingold’s corporate governance be improved to disallow such a situation and protect lenders and investors? How could lenders reduce their credit risk in accepting gold bars as collateral when they could not fully rely on their clients, independent testing companies, and insurance companies? Do you consider US regulators’ listing and other regulations were adequate for foreign companies? Did Friedman LLP as auditors make a best effort to examine Kingold’s assets and present its client’s financial information fairly?
This case tells the story of EcoMatcher – a green and socially responsible enterprise that has found a scalable and profitable business model planting trees. EcoMatcher is interesting partly as an excellent example of strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR); its core profit-making activity of planting trees is intrinsically good for the planet and its people. This differs from the triple bottom line approach employed by some other companies, which use green or prosocial activities to offset core profit-making activities that may harm society or the environment. Both strategic CSR and the triple bottom line approach can underlie improvements in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting. This case focuses on EcoMatcher as an exemplar of strategic CSR while a companion case (EcoMatcher: Daring to Make a Difference, UST123) focuses on how EcoMatcher’s founder made the difficult leap from corporate executive to social entrepreneur, trading off power, status, and wealth for more meaning in his work.