Sample Strategic Alliance

Sce­na­rio

In­tense com­pe­ti­tion by di­rect com­pe­ti­tors with ag­gres­sive ex­pan­sion and pri­cing stra­te­gies, and size-re­la­ted struc­tu­ral di­sad­van­ta­ges (par­ti­cu­larly in con­nec­tion with purchasing) put pres­sure on our cli­ent's busi­ness mo­del and ul­ti­mately on its pro­fi­ta­bi­lity. This cli­ent is a spe­cia­list re­tailer in the health and be­auty aid sec­tor with around 180 stores in nort­hern Ger­many.

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Af­ter a de­tai­led ana­ly­sis of pos­si­ble re­ac­tions, Eb­ner Stolz re­com­men­ded that the cli­ent look for an al­li­ance part­ner. In ad­di­tion, we sug­gested that an in­ter­nal stra­te­gic fit­ness pro­gram could help in­crease re­ve­nues and pro­fits over the long term. But to join ranks with a part­ner, the cli­ent would first have to si­gni­fi­cantly im­prove its purchasing terms and achieve po­ten­tial sa­vings in de­fi­ned over­head func­tions.

Im­ple­men­ta­tion

Over a pe­riod of 12 months an in­ter­di­sci­pli­nary team from Eb­ner Stolz con­sis­ting of busi­ness con­sul­tants, la­wy­ers and tax ex­perts as­sis­ted the com­pany with all sorts of ques­ti­ons about the al­li­ance pro­cess. Working clo­sely with the com­pany and its em­ployees, Eb­ner Stolz as­sis­ted with ex­plo­ratory talks with po­ten­tial part­ners, de­ve­lo­ping in­di­vi­dual al­li­ance mo­dels and ne­go­tia­ting and draf­ting the con­tract for the plan­ned al­li­ance with the cho­sen part­ner.

Re­sult

The al­li­ance part­nership enab­led our cli­ent to get stron­ger and suc­cess­fully meet the chal­len­ges of the mar­ket. This was achie­ved th­rough two fac­tors in par­ti­cu­lar: im­pro­ving the purchasing terms by bund­ling the vo­lume of goods, and achie­ving sa­vings in the over­head area thanks to a newly-foun­ded joint ser­vice cen­ter. The earnings po­ten­tial of the al­li­ance is in the tens of mil­li­ons. As a re­sult, our cli­ent will once again be on par with the com­pe­ti­tion in terms of per­for­mance and earnings.

The fact that Eb­ner Stolz al­ways en­su­res that the cli­ent is in­de­pen­dent th­roug­hout the pro­cess was es­sen­tial for the suc­cess of the pro­ject and the sta­ke­hol­ders' ac­cep­tance of the in­itial idea of an al­li­ance part­nership and its con­crete im­ple­men­ta­tion (share­hol­ders, ma­nage­ment, em­ployees, fi­nan­ciers). With the al­li­ance so­lu­tion achie­ved, our cli­ent is in a po­si­tion to lead the fa­mily-run com­pany in­de­pen­dently in its core busi­ness af­ter more than 100 years.

Eb­ner Stolz as­sists cli­ents with al­li­ance pro­jects th­rough its com­pre­hen­sive in­ter­di­sci­pli­nary ex­per­tise and im­ple­men­ta­tion-ori­en­ted ap­proach. For ad­di­tio­nal in­for­ma­tion on the sub­ject of al­li­an­ces, please con­tact us.