Columbia Sportswear Company Essay

The current chairman is Gert Boyle who is the son of the founder of the company while the Chief Executive Officer is Timothy Boyle. Columbia’s resource base, including both tangible and intangible resources; Columbia has a broad resource base; it collaborates with manufacturing suppliers who share their sustainable management manufacturing approach and whose products are produced in the same factories as theirs (Columbia Sportswear Company Conflict Minerals Report For The Year Ended 2014). The company has no manufacturing facility and practically all of their goods are processed by self-governing plants that are situated outside of America. The company goes above, and beyond to ensure that raw materials they use in their manufacturing are not produced from countries that abuse human rights or under conditions of armed conflict.

They do so to follow the Due Diligence Guidance for Accountable Supply Chains of Minerals (Columbia Sportswear Company Conflict Minerals Report for the Year Ended 2014). A horizontal company structure is that where the chain of command is relatively shortened (Denning 2014). That said, Columbia distributes their completed goods to specific countries through lesser channels thus the horizontal nature, which include South Africa, Turkey, India, Hong Kong, Panama, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Canada just but to mention a few. Columbia’s vertical (supply network) collaborations; Bearing in mind that a vertical supply network is inclusive of many layers, a tall chain of management is usually at work. The CEO of the company makes and delegates decisions to lower levels directors thus the long chain.

Most of the products manufactured by Columbia Sportswear Company are tremendously industrial and classically are inclusive of mechanisms and trim from varied traders. The company maintains the contracts it signed with most of its finished good suppliers especially if they produce top-notch products and they have abided with the Conflict Mineral Policy (Columbia Sportswear Company Conflict Minerals Report For The Year Ended 2014). Columbia’s horizontal collaborations. Columbia Sportswear Company acknowledges it is a large player and has seen the need to collaborate with brands industries and multi-stakeholders to impact meaningful change towards progress. The company collaborates with other brands and even contracts them to produce merchandise for them. It also collaborates with Sustainable Apparel coalition to allow for supply chain transparency while also collaborating with the fair labor association to improve the life of plant employees and grants autonomous observing of plant environments among others.

It is also a fragmented competitive landscape due to the availability of various companies selling similar products (Euromonitor International2018). The Nigerian economy, though growing, is still a poor economy which therefore limits the growth rate, especially in the last year. Retailing in Nigeria experienced a slower growth rate in 2017 than it did in 2016 although the sales were higher. The slow growth rate was attributed to the general increase in prices as a result of the recession that was experienced in 2016, then prompted a late economic recovery in 2017 (Euromonitor International, 2018). The general price increase of consumer goods also affected the economy. Nigeria also distributes its clothing to all the fifteen member states of ECOWAS and other parts of Africa (Oxford Business Group, 2018).

Some of the textiles are also imported to countries such as the USA where celebrities like Beyoncé and political leaders like Michelle Obama are dressed by Nigerian designers. Consumer behavior and attitudes in the Nigerian apparel market; A Nigerian customer is a person whose behavior is directed by diverse and different controls such as their culture, viewpoint, attitudes, insight, and prospects. All the above form their flavor, option and item preferences. Most Nigerians seem to have the notion that locally produced commodities are substandard to those imported and overseas merchandise in performance and quality. There are three valuable lessons that any investor should have in mind before setting up shop in Nigeria. First, one ought to be enormously careful on the partner they choose to set up a business with.

The biggest error a business can make is for them to choose a dishonest or incompetent distributor to do their bidding (The Economist, 2014). As long as the incentives are wrong, all arrangements will fail to be them, from a local firm or an international one. A good example is when Nando’s a South African company chose to partner with UAC restaurant to own its franchise though it was a rival competitor. This will call for the Chief Executive Officer to provide supremacy to Nigerian directors so that they can familiarize to the changing circumstances in the industry. Good examples of such companies in Nigeria include PZ Cussons, Unilever, Guinness and Nestlé which have strong local identities (The Economist, 2014). Africa is a growing economy that needs to be tapped into and exploited.

Nigeria is the best testing ground for Africa given it population size and rapid growth. If a company can succeed in Nigeria, it can very well succeed in other parts of Africa. Available at: https://www. columbia. com/on/demandware. static/-/Sites-Columbia_US-Library/default/dw673cc82f/AboutUs/PDF/Conflict_Minerals_Report_web. pdf [Accessed 26 Feb. com/retailing-in-nigeria/report [Accessed 26 Feb. Ogunnaike, O.  Nigerians’ Perception of Locally Made Products: A Study on Textile Fabrics Consumers in Kaduna State. [Pdf] Nigeria: Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiesti Bulletin, pp. Available at: http://www.  Business in Nigeria: Africa’s testing ground: To make it big in Africa, a business must succeed in Nigeria, the continent’s largest market. No one said it would be easy.