Introduction
The scenario for this week’s assignment centers once again around Guillermo Furniture, a manufacturing company owned and operated by Guillermo Navallez. Guillermo’s Furniture Store is located near his home of Sonora, Mexico. Sonora is a place that is considered to be a beautiful vacation spot with mild weather, traffic free roads, and an atmosphere of pictorial scenic beauty; it is also the largest manufacturing “spot” of furniture in North America. Currently, Guillermo is experiencing growth and economic expansion in his market, coupled with challenges that are affecting his business sustainability and profits. Emergence of competition, economic growth, and enhanced developments in technology has affected Guillermo’s production and profitability; profit margins have shrunk as prices fell and cost rose (University of Phoenix, 2010). To remain a pillar and profitable in his current markets he must analyze his financial position, embrace change, and employ aggressive financial strategies.
For a number of years Guillermo Navallez enjoyed being the owner of the only furniture manufacturing business in the town of Sonora, Mexico. The town was not only a beautiful vacation destination; it supplied Guillermo with a generous supply of timber for his furniture production, a relatively inexpensive labor force, and the ability to charge premium prices for his products. As the cliché goes, “Anything that seems too good to be true usually is.” Competition moved into Sonora making it impossible for Guillermo to continue operating his business in the same fashion and sustain the benefits of large profit margins. The influx of change presented numerous challenges to Guillermo’s existing operation. The first was an overseas company who used a hi-tech approach to the furniture manufacturing process, allowing for furniture to be made to exact specifications and the ability to charge customers extremely low prices. Second, an emergence of people and jobs...