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2196 : STEP FOUR – PLANNING FOR IMPLEMENTATION

It is worth noting in passing that similar finance-driven blocks to
implementation applied to marketing. Two nearby funeral directors
threatened to sue her if she used the Body Shop name. She saw them
off by phoning the story anonymously to the Brighton Evening Argus,
which gave it centre-spread and taught her that you never need pay for
advertising.167

thinking outside the conventional supply chain We saw in
Chapter 2 how Ingvar Kamprad overcame the manufacturing blocks
imposed by the Swedish retail furniture cartel by forging good relations
with low-cost Polish manufacturers and by identifying spare
manufacturing capacity held by such non-traditional production
sources as ski manufacturers and shirt makers.

a problem outsourced is a problem eliminated Sometimes manufacturing
has represented a block to implementation because of lack of know-how.
Recognising the intense difficulties encountered while manufacturing the
Head skis in-house, for example, Howard Head avoided repetition of the
block by outsourcing the technically complex production of his outsize
aluminium tennis rackets to Kunnan Lo in Taiwan.

experts always know why things cannot be done The ‘experts’ in
the field regarded Andrew Palmer’s requirement for a process to extend
the shelf-life of his fresh soup as an insurmountable obstacle. Palmer’s
persistent challenge to conventional wisdom, his refusal to accept
defeat, together with the support of Reading University’s Food
Technology Department, finally eliminated the block by developing a
feasible, and patentable, manufacturing process which would underpin
the success of the New Covent Garden Soup Company.

suppliers Suppliers should not be overlooked as a potential block.

Perhaps they will not advance credit to a start-up company. Perhaps
they do not have the technical ability consistently to achieve your
specification – quality considerations contributed to Karan Bilimoria’s
decision to transfer the brewing of Cobra, ‘the beer from Bangalore’, to
Bedford after about six years, for example.

At other times, suppliers may have been warned off from supplying
you, which was the problem faced by Ingvar Kamprad or by Sarah
Tremellen of Bravissimo, as we saw in the previous chapter. And at
other times, suppliers may consider that it is not in their interests to
deal with you, a problem faced by easyCinema in its early days.