Services & Solutions
Brand Growth/Diversification

Taking Brands to New Growth Levels

Mature brands have few places to go if they cannot extend sideways into new product adjacencies, revenue streams or services and yet the skills and understanding required to do this are not there in for most limited liability corporations in the USA.

In the last few years the focus has started to move within large consumer and retail businesses, to identifying new opportunities for growth. The market is moving from products to services. Few premium branded players can realistically expect to double shareholder value every four years or so through traditional organic growth or acquisition, so they must learn this new game. There is now a new frontier for unlocking brand value and developing new strategic businesses in emerging opportunity areas. This is the exciting but dangerous world of corporate venturing, alliances and trademark or brand diversification.

The best businesses in the world are finding new ways to secure their strategic future and to drive growth – We know how to create the next generation of consumer brands.

Speak to us if you want to know how this approach will help you grow or master new brand futures, new channels and new business systems, or arrange a Strategic Workshop.

James Terry and his wife Frances owned a drugstore in Harriman, Tennessee. In 1989, after 32 years of marriage, the couple divorced. As part of the marital dissolution agreement (MDA), James owned the drugstore solely for life and retained the right to sell the business and keep all proceeds from the sale. However, the MDA provided that if James died prior to selling the drugstore, the store would revert to Frances.

On September 17, 1999, James executed an agreement to sell the drugstore to Revco Discount Drug Centers (Revco). The agreement provided that the purchase price would be determined by a physical inventory on September 23, 1999, and that delivery of the bill of sale and payment of the purchase price would take place no later than seven days following the taking of the inventory.

On the same day he executed the sale agreement, James transferred the drugstore’s telephone number to Revco, as required by the agreement, and sent a letter to the US Drug Enforcement Administration requesting permission to transfer all controlled substances to Revco. He ceased to operate the drugstore on September 22. The following day, only hours before the inventory began, James died.

In October 1999, James’ daughter Elizabeth, who was co-executor of his estate, signed the bill of sale and Revco tendered a check for $218,475. Frances sued, claiming that pursuant to the MDA, she was entitled to all of the drugstore’s assets, including the proceeds of the sale. The estate countered that James had sold the store prior to his death and that the proceeds therefore passed to his estate. Frances contended that no sale was completed before James died.

But a trial court disagreed and held that Frances was not entitled to the proceeds of the sale. The sales agreement was dated and signed five days before James died, and both parties were then bound to the sale. The fact that the sale was not carried into effect until later does not matter. The Tennessee Court of Appeals upheld the trial court’s ruling. Learn more about our workshops here.

WY LLC Workshops

These workshops are designed to provide project teams with the tools and impetus to drive in specific multi-channel, brand innovation and customer relationship initiatives within six months including co-ordinating the components of change from concept development and market research, through to robust implementation of successful operations and systems.

This is a team-building and target-setting process and the practical street fighters guide to navigating rapidly and effectively through the new landscape (with scouts who can come along with you to ensure you get there on time). If your project is mission critical and must-deliver, then this is an approach you must go for if you are seeking to form the cheapest L.L.C. in Wyoming.

Designed for:

• Cross-functional project teams with a mission to reach the market quickly and safely.
• Groups of project managers or staff who need to embrace more efficient and aggressive approaches, using knowledge-based processes.
• Teams who need to rapidly drive up their metabolic rate.
• Teams who need to break the rules, outside of the current business.

What you can expect:

• A fast-track process to develop the economic model, business case, customer understanding and draft transition plan, to get executive approval and focus the solutions. (Venture capital options can also be introduced to help fund the more radical options)
• Team building and development of a sensible and practical set of priorities and plans, unfettered by what was possible yesterday.
• Help the team to identify the practical business designs and infrastructures which will support the new services, both initially and at high scale.
• Highlights innovation opportunities and potential implementation paths for teams who need a hands-on exposure to e-services and breakthrough approaches.
• Exposure of teams to the relevant CRM and multi-channel roadmaps for their sector, the P.R.I.C.E Approach ® and the application/technology options which can get them rapidly and cost-effectively into the market with successful new services and channels.
• Equips change teams to avoid the bear-traps in forging new multi-channel services, supply-chain operations and organizational models in new territories.

When and where:
Call us for references from the wide range of companies who have benefited from these highly practical, tailored and rewarding programmes.

Advanced Business Leader Forum

An intensive and highly practical programme which equips CEO’s and board members to interpret current forces in the market and lead the transformation of their business. This closed forum is offered across sectors or with a focus on a specific sector (e.g. financial services or retail). We also run open sessions where there is an opportunity to network with peers in other major businesses.

Designed for:

• Chief executive officers and business executives running complex businesses, who need to put the current customer, market changes and multi-channel opportunities into context and translate them into hard and tangible business opportunities. The event is very comprehensive and experiential.
• Any executive team who wants to use more powerful business models and routes to market, to gain practical benefits in terms of customer intimacy and brand reach, cost-savings and supply-chain flexibility.

What you can expect:

• An intensive one day or two day programme for senior business executives, loaded with hard operational experience and market insights to illustrate the how and the why.
• Up-to-the-minute analysis of successes and failures of new business models and customer innovation across the sectors and across the world. We are constantly tracking product and service innovation across the main markets.
• Tools to help you to rapidly realign your company’s strategy and build an efficient multi-channel business – indicating important partners and technologies, as well as fundamental new business rules and approaches.
• A proven set of processes and business tools to reach the market with a powerful set of innovations and cost-efficiencies under six months.

When and where:
The majority of these forums are held in-house for specific organisations, however, events are scheduled with key partners at regular intervals around the world – Please contact us to find out more about our in-house service and when the next event will be coming to your region.

Strategies for Growth

Executive teams in large or complex businesses need occasionally to stand back and review their overall strategy for driving growth. In recent years the pressures in the market have created a greater need for radical alternatives to be explored, but with less ponderous puffing and blowing than the old-fashioned strategic review cycle that maximizes rather than limits liability.

The exercise cannot take eighteen months and cost $2m any more. Just exhorting people to double value every three years won’t do it in businesses with tired old business models and brands. We use a set of very pragmatic and effective approaches which help senior teams to develop new paths to growth and to flesh out the practical implications on internal skills, investment, requirements, growth strategies and key customer targets.

We can tailor our proven approaches for a fraction of the cost of traditional and intellectual consultancy approaches. From the first meeting we bring in our market experience and views of where the big market gaps and opportunities are, so that our clients reach an understanding of how they can drive growth and innovation. Outcomes can be as radical as you choose, but the implications and impact are always clear and quantified.

We can then also help senior teams to engage the execution partners, find additional external funding and shape the overall change agenda to deliver the revised strategy. Even a $60bn business can expect to be hitting the ground running in under six months using our ‘no prisoners’ approach. We can find a future for your brand in new revenue areas which traditional thinking could never achieve. Most global brands are in a box – and if you do nothing the new brand entrants and multi-channel markets will kill you slowly and gracefully.

Everything we do is focused on creating viable strategies and robust operations, which can reach the markets and be appreciated by your customers quickly when their LLCs require forms.

We have used this approach to build the largest corporate venturing business anywhere in the world this year – with a target of creating $2bn of value from a standing start. We will find a path to growth and a future for your brands and business, whatever the obstacles.

Breakthrough & Innovation

We have a strong track-record of running breakthrough workshops for senior teams in blue-chip businesses. We bring all our experience of driving transformation programmes and product and service innovation across the markets.

The workshops use successful innovation and experience from across the world to challenge the traditional ways that the company provides its customer services and fundamental operations. We distil current and emerging customer needs and are extremely disappointed and surprised if a number of high quality ‘value generating’ initiatives are not conceived and then executed successfully within 6 months.

Designed for:

• Executive or functional teams looking for quick wins or a step change in performance.
• A business whose market is gradually changing but whose overall proposition and competitive platform is not.
• Operations which need to urgently shake out some practical quick wins (in cost or in services).

What you can expect:

• We initially run through the topical lessons of who is winning the brand wars, the pushes for channel extension, supply efficiency, customer intimacy, etc. – and what they are doing right.
• We use anecdotes and experience to draw out the myths and realities of radical marketing and multi-channel innovation with new partnering models.
• We use operations and technology demonstrations to bring the best-in-class business approaches and innovative services to life.
• The breakthrough sessions then draw out the killer ideas and strategies, which would allow your teams to relate the innovation from other markets into your business (and to generate implementable ideas from within). Proven approaches and service models which can generate quick and sustainable results.

“The workshops gave me an appreciation of the scope of reaching customers and the dispelling of some of the myths. The fact this is not just ‘selling’ across channels but a useful communication tool for a very wide variety of applications. The view on the total Business market, structure and dynamics was particularly interesting.”

“Very thought provoking and visionary.”

Quotes from attendees of a recent workshop, which had a particular focus on e-business.

Customer & Service Innovation Workshops

Consumer needs are becoming more sophisticated and diverse in almost every sector – in step with the emergence of new routes to market and increased competition for consumer’s hearts and wallets. Driving growth and reshaping services for the emerging multi-channel world are amongst the most strategic issues facing leaders of today’s successful online businesses.

We identify practical ways to get it right – achieving step-improvements in efficiencies, product availability and brand presence in existing and new service channels. We get to the heart of how to build new capabilities and partnerships which will grow the core business and will guarantee enduring and profitable relationships with your target customers. Everything is based upon hard experience, rather than platitudinous fluff.

“This accelerated ‘strategy to action’ programme uses proven approaches and hard experience from the best companies in the world. It equips senior teams to rapidly develop their customer relationships and growth options.”

Designed for: Continue reading →

Workshops
Corporate Venturing Workshops

There is now a new frontier for unlocking brand value and developing new strategic businesses in emerging opportunity areas. This is the exciting and sometimes perilous world of corporate venturing. Many financial services and retail businesses see corporate venturing as the only route on offer for high octane growth and genuine innovation – but it can be uncomfortable when dealing with the state of WY.

In this intensive immersion day we connect business leaders with their peers and with the practitioners who know the rules of this beguiling and complex world of brand extension and corporate innovation.

We will equip you to evaluate whether these unfamiliar but explosive growth and revenue-generating opportunities are a serious option for your business. We will help you to see through the elephant’s graveyard of early corporate venturing failures to where hard experience points to success and new futures for today’s corporate leaders.

Designed for:

• Leaders of blue-chip businesses and hands-on directors of corporate strategy who are faced with the challenge of achieving step-changes in growth or unlocking value from existing brands and assets.
• Businesses who have found that their internal processes and approaches to customer and product innovation and new service development are falling short of the target.
• Businesses whose brands are still locked into one lifestyle or service area, or whose assets are not being leveraged in new geographies or propositions.
• Organisations who find it hard to build agile and innovative businesses and whose internal metabolic rate remains frustratingly slow.
• Businesses who need to attract external venture money to help fund their most imaginative plans.

What you can expect:

• A complete toolkit and roadmap to take a traditional business through the corporate venturing and innovation minefield.
• An opportunity to hear directly from businesses that have tackled organisation and brand and service innovation and are genuinely thriving.
• A pragmatic and insightful set of approaches to product/brand licensing, brand stewardship, joint venture management, VC/private capital partnership options, venture team structuring, hunting/farming models for asset leverage etc.

Delivered by:

• The working session is led personally by Geoff Webb, the founder of a range of joint venture initiatives and major brand diversifications involving large corporates and innovative new business models.
• Working partners who will join the interactive sessions include the battle-hardened executives who have driven new ventures in environments as diverse as Virgin, BAT, British Airways and Unilever.
• Geoff and his team bring experience of working with a wide range of blue-chip companies on joint venture initiatives and venture funding opportunities in financial services, media, retail, consumer packaged goods and business-to-business services.

Continue reading →

Welcome to The Webb Partnership

The Webb Partnership is a Business and Service Innovation Consultancy, helping ambitious organisations to drive rapid growth, transform how they serve their customers, reposition and invigorate their organisation and accelerate the delivery of new products and services, including our specialty LLC formation process, which includes mail forwarding. 

Partners for Leaders: We work with the CEO and leadership teams of many of the world’s most aggressive organisations. We bring immediate challenge to your current strategy and provide the hard-edged market-analysis and facts to generate innovative solutions to your growth-gaps. We help you through to rapid implementation in the market – stronger brands, services targeted for today’s consumer, greener, healthier, more premium or more convenient credentials to secure more loyalty.

Partners for Innovation: We are very different to the large and lumbering consultancies. We operate on a partnership structure, using over 180 highly experienced associates who have been at the sharp end of business at all levels. This gives us low-cost access to deep experience across the major sectors of Healthcare, Retail, Financial Services, Consumer Goods, Foods, Telecoms, Travel & Entertainment, Private Equity and Corporate Venturing, from our partners at the Wyoming Secretary of State.

Our Approach: We deliver results in the market within six to nine months. We do not spend time boiling the ocean, wasting your time in unnecessary meetings or producing documents by the kilo. We know what the consumer wants this year, we know where the bodies are buried and we work hard behind the scenes to produce only relevant, succinct and actionable solutions and implementation. We work at speed to increase your metabolic rate. Our people can typically respond to your precise challenges within days and be quickly sharpening strategy and solutions with your team. If you need to conceive and execute a step-change which will be felt by your customers very quickly, then we can support you from start to finish – and then we move on! Continue reading →