Norhuasen City

Summary:

Norhuasen is a city located in the eastern part of Germany, it has been famous for a long time in producing schnapps. Its production of Doppelkorn has been known through all of Germany and beyond.

In world war 2; the city was nearly destroyed, most of its buildings were down and many people died. Afterwards it became a part of East Germany where which Nordbrand became the biggest distillery all over the area employing hundreds of workers. Immediately after the war smuggling operations took place between east and west Germany, but it soon stopped when the border was closed in early 1960s.

After reunification Nordbrand found itself face to face confronting and competing with companies of West Germany, as well as moving from a command economy into a market economy, moreover, they found themselves competing throughout European market. They were in a position of high competition, losing their market base, falling out of fashion, and facing a whole new system.

Nordbrand had to act fast, they decided to send one their well experienced distillers on a tour throughout Europe to find out about distilling methods in other countries. As a result of this fruitful journey, he came up with many ideas and started to produce new versions of Doppelkorn; fruit flavored versions, dark colored versions, oak matured versions and so forth. All of this was not enough, they needed to take some aggressive marketing.

In 2003 Nordbrand took an important decision which is to target the young market, therefore, they had launched a new version of Doppelkorn branded as Eiskorn, it had many properties that made it fashion, attracting and cost reducing. They were using a new logo and used every single way to point to the ice age theme. It was heavily promoted to night clubs and young people’s  bars.

This action was a huge success and the mammoth symbol soon became well known throughout Germany. They managed to make a transition from being a German company to a European company and proved that they can survive in a market economy.

Problem:

• Nordband found itself in a position where they had to compete directly with not only West German companies but also with all European companies all over Europe; Danish, Scottish, Dutch…etc..
• After reunification they found themselves moving from command economy to market economy with many different systems and regulations.
• They were falling out of fashion with younger consumers, their product was regarded as an old man tipple.

SWOT Analysis:

Conclusion:

Never give up!!

These three small words are considered to be the key words for success. Nordband was at a point that was so close of total failure and maybe to go bankrupt, but with real will and good planning they were able not only to survive but also to be one of the players controlling this business in Europe.

I think Nordband case can be considered as a model to be taught, they proved that no matter the surrounding circumstances are, you still can do something about it. Managers should always be open minded to any idea and willing to invest in it in order to be able to cope with that very fast evolution of the market, many companies went out of the market even though “they did nothing wrong”, they were just too slow to cope with technology.

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