Company visit/ guest lecture | Highlite Kerkrade | Subject and relation to marketing, finance or law in week … and lesson | A company trip to Highlite was arranged by the course coordinator Mauk Wilbers. | | Summary of company visit/ guest lecture (between 240-280 words). Study the company website. Do research and find a competitor, client and supplier for this company. Give your comment on the relation with these 3 parties. Think in terms of opportunities and threats (external analysis) and Porter’s framework. Describe the three questions you prepared for the company visit or guest lecture concerning export, law, finance and/or supply chain management and logistics, the analysis and the answers. | When we went to Highlite Kerkrade we were taken in by the vice president Patrick Hervelle, who has been working at the company for sixteen years. The company was started in 1994 with an earlier version created in 1993 in Huls. When they first started they were only hired for bands and provided their sound equipment but that quickly escalated. Highlite is the main importer and wholesaler of audio and lighting for the entertainment and architectural industry; they are a ‘one stop solution’. Right now they have 141 fulltime employees with 28 across Europe and on the road. They have a yearly turnover of 40-45 million euros; they import 30 million from China and export their product to over 70 countries and have more than 4000 customers worldwide. They have started their own branches in Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and are starting to establish one in Honk Kong. They work with several major brands such as, Dutch Media Tools, DAP Audio, Show Tec, Artecta, and Infinity Line. This company does not do installations they only provide their products to companies and they either do the installation themselves or hire an outside contractor to do it. They strive to send out shipments the same day if the order is placed before 2, it is then out the door by 5. They invest in a lot of inventory in china because they need to calculate for the months to come, for example around Christmas; sometimes it take 4/6/8 months for an order to get to them. Competitor: Flashlight, AED, American DJ, Purple Group BVSupplier: Infinity Live, Artecta, (DMT, DAP Audio, Show Tec); combination of their own products and products from their suppliersClient: Big Brother, The Voice of Holland In relation to porters five forces and relating that to competitors, suppliers, and clients:Threat of New Entrants: There are always new entrants but depending on how successful they are this company should not be worriedThreat of Substitution Products: There is always a threat of new products that could be used a substitute but they have loyal customers and I think that is how they retain their loyalty.Supplier Power: I think they have a good lead on supplier power because they manage to work well in partner with other suppliers to give their customers good products. I think there is a good amount of competition but they have managed to ground and set themselves up in such a way that they have managed to achieve nothing but success. Buyer Power: I think power cannot be too manipulated here because I feel like loyalty form their customers is what keeps them coming back. If the customers are satisfied with the product, the quality, and the pricing; they have no reason but to come back. Unless one of these products gave their customers a bad feeling, that is when they have a reason to switch, and Highlite should look at what went wrong here. Internal Rivalry: They have quite a few existing companies with whom they could have a competition with but with their numbers and with an expansion starting to come up in Hong Kong I don’t expect them needing to be so worried. 1. How do you supply all your products? They import 30 million euros worth of product from china which they logistically need to plan in relation to holidays and shipping time which can be either 4/6/8 months. 2. Do you do the installations yourself after you have sent the product out? Once they have sent their product out to a customer the customer either installs the product themselves or they hire an outside contractor to do it for them, they never do installations themselves. 3. In regards to logistics do you have issues when it comes to supply and transport from China? There are always things that you need to worry about; in regards to logistics and supply and transport there are always things that they need to worry about such as risk and liabilities that they need to take and then what if of transportation and country issues. They say it always sounds easier than it is, it requires good organization of your transportation and logistics to get things properly and on time. | |

Guest lectures and company visit Special topics 3 Block 3.4 | Name student | Brittany Young | Student number | 1137697 | Company visit/ guest lecture | International Trade Management by Dr. Mohammed Khalil | Subject and relation to marketing, finance or law in week … and lesson | Emerging Markets in Today World. | | Summary of company visit/ guest lecture (between 240-280 words). | This week we had a lecture from one of the new professors at our university, Dr. Mohammed Khalil who is originally from Morocco and has come here to work on research and practice in regards to projects about emerging markets. In his talk he focused a lot on exemplifying the markets in India, China, and Asia because he says by 2050, they will be emerging high GDP countries unlike today it is the United States and Europe. He has worked with Philips and Saint Gobain and in the last 15 years he has worked on coaching students who have left university and are going into the working world. He also has his own lighting company and he focuses on how he can bring LED lights into the market. During his lecture he went on to show us many examples of how people in emerging markets are using, sometimes their harsh situations, and making money. For example in Africa people have made a business charging peoples phones for 20 cents a day; they simply drop their phone off at the shop and pick it up in the morning. He gave more examples with air purifiers, white goods, bread machines, developed bank applications, blindness, water access, and education. His big point during his lecture was that you cannot transplant a domestic market business models to a new market because it will not work; you cannot sell things to customers who aren’t in your usual market if you do not know their culture. Client: Philips, Saint Gobain Supplier: His own LED Company and the partner companies on his various projectsCompetitor: Philips | |

Guest lectures and company visit Special topics 3 Block 3.4 | Name student | Brittany Young | Student number | 1137697 | Company visit/ guest lecture | Ritva Junna Satakunta from Finland | Subject and relation to marketing, finance or law in week … and lesson | She talked about the import and export of goods from Finland | | Summary of company visit/ guest lecture (between 240-280 words). | This week we had a guest lecture from Ritva Junna Satakunta who came to us from Finland and talked to us about foreign trade in Finland. She began the lecture by telling us something about Finland and the Lapland area. When she started to talk about the economy she began by telling is that in the last years the finish economy has been decreasing; she says this is because the wood industry has sank leaving not so much for the production of paper. Also one of the biggest companies, Nokia, was sold to Microsoft and this resulted in many manufacturing plants needing to be shut down.Because of sanctions in Russia, they have also decreased their trade with Finland; this has now pushed Germany and Sweden to be their top trade partners. Although they still feel as if they are very dependent on Russian oil and gas, they are looking for other countries to take this spot and at this point and time this country look like Norway. Finland’s current account has been in a deficit since 2011 and this should improve within the next couple years because of an increase in export services revolved around technical knowledge and engineering; something that they can look at of an example is the snow mobile project in which Lapland students won an award in when they went to a competition.The next day in our marketing class we had another lecture from Ritva Junna Satakunta and she showed us the export of child playgrounds from Finland to areas all over the world and all the different variations they can come in depending on their demographic and the region of the world they are planning to put it in. | |

Guest lectures and company visit Special topics 3 Block 3.4 | Name student | Brittany Young | Student number | 1137697 | Company visit/ guest lecture | Ger Schuivens on June 3rd, 2015 | Subject and relation to marketing, finance or law in week … and lesson | We had a guest lecture from one of the university teachers, Ger Schuivens | | Summary of company visit/ guest lecture | This week we had a guest lecture from one of the teachers at our university on the topic, “breaking all the trends’. He based a lot of the information he talked about in his lecture off of a book he highly recommended, ‘No Ordinary Disruption’, and this book goes on to explain all the trends and developments which the author predicted and then the ones that he did predict and came true and other that he never foresaw coming and become one of the most used products in the world today, i.e. mobile phone and internet social media websites. He emphasized a lot of the issue of megatrends. Megatrends are developed and emerged through a global, sustained, macroeconomic force. The top mega trends that stand to develop in the future with the most potential are; urbanization, technology, demographics, and globalization. The change that will come into play with this mega trends are 3000 times what we are thinking of now. These four major forces ae going to cause a major rift in the global environment; urbanization will increase and more and more people will cram themselves into living in the cities; i.e. The situation with Hong Kong.With these megatrends there will be some changes to technology, as in how fast it will start changing. The main technologies that we should look out for in regards of having a major movement in change, in order to deal with people capacity, is mobile internet, knowledge automation, and social media. In 2050 the average life expectancy for males will be 87 and females 90; there will be a 25% increase in longer life expectancy within the next 35 years. This means that in 2020 every 10 working class citizen will need to be able to take care, financially, of 13 elderly people. Because of this, especially in the United States, the cost of care for the elderly and putting them into homes to get sufficient care will increase with a heavy financial burden. | |