Jones Blair

Case Background:

Jones-Blair Company, primarily based in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area, is an established company in the US paint industry worth approximately $13 billion. A large portion of the maturing paint industry, $10 billion, is established from architectural coatings and sundries (brushes, rollers, paint removers and thinners, etc.), and the annual growth rate is expected to equal that of general inflation in the forthcoming years. As the growth rate is slowing, the number of paint companies is shrinking at a rate of 2 to 3 percent per year. This decline is due in large part to the slow sales growth, but it is also fueled by the necessity for continued expenditures in research & development and recent compliance standards set forth by the EPA. In the coming years, the Jones-Blair Company faces these challenges, as well as those presented by mass merchandisers competing with Jones-Blair, as they attempt to increase its company sales growth and remain successful.

Untapped Markets: "The White Spaces"

Of the three segments that the US paint industry divided into, Jones-Blair has a presence in only two of them, architectural coatings and OEM coatings. Although there isn't much information included in the case study as to the anticipated expenses regarding expanding their products/portfolio to be included into the special purpose coatings segment, I would recommend looking into determining if this would be feasible given their limited resources and that this market represents 22% of the entire industry .

Another customer segment that seems to be growing lately is the professional painters. According to Alexander Barrett, "companies have not pursued the 400 or so professional painting firms in DFW and the 200 professional painters outside the DFW area. If Jones-Blair could possibly establish contractual agreements with some or all of these firms, the company would be better able to create a competitive advantage within its' specific territory.

Mass merchandisers and Home Centers make up 50% of where all architectural coating paints are sold . To date, Jones-Blair does have a presence in this distribution channel; however it is unclear as to how many retail outlets there products are sold at. Dependent upon this information, I would encourage Jones-Blair to create a greater presence with the mass merchandisers, both within and outside of the DFW area. By implementing a greater presence in retail outlets, they are better positioned to capture a greater percentage of market share from the do-it-yourselfers who predominately patronize this type of distribution channel.

Employees:

Since Jones-Blair only employees eight sales representatives, I would recommend that the company hire some additional sales representative to tackle the aforementioned initiatives. Specifically, I would recommend that they hire an additional 5 sales representatives with 3 of the 5 concentrating on establishing contracts among the painting firms in and outside of DFW area, and the other 2 focusing on getting the Jones-Blair products on additional mass merchandiser's shelves. If these employees are successful at completing these tasks that they will be hired for,