Harry & David Holdings is best known as the first mail-order and direct-market company of fruits. The company started out with a huge plantation for pears as its main source of fruit. The company started out strong, but it went downhill for some time until Steve Heyer CEO came in to help.
Heyer found a ton of things to do when he set to work reviving this concern. The company faced annual losses and that was during the time of economic depression in the US and many parts of the country. Heyer's first solution was intriguing: he fired several of the high-level officers of the company and hired more mid-level officials.
Heyer thus pruned the higher branches of all those unnecessary yet resource-sucking shoots, keeping and rewarding only those execs who actually did their jobs. The result was that the company managed to save just M shy of M, and all without hurting the salaries of those in the lower ranks. This is important in a time such as this, where so many wage cuts have been made.
“We have duplications and multiple systems that were very expensive,” the CEO explained. The organization was suffering from a crippling unwillingness to go out of the old box and think outside of it. Heyer, however, happens to have no fears of change.
He has spoken time and time gain on the subject of thinking out of the box and the courage to implement those new thoughts. He was always pushing his fellows to go against the grain. He said that businesses would soon have to deal with a situation where it would be more normal for a customer to demand a unique experience over a "factory" one.
Essentially, he was telling others in the industry that it was high time for a paradigm shift. An example of this sort of huge shift in methods is shown by Heyer himself in his Starwood Hotels marketing. He shift the point of emphasis in his marketing from the quarters in the hotels to the entertainments and experiences to be had in the hotels.
Heyer has worked for other companies, including Turner Broadcasting. Around the time, he was also a member of AOL Time Warner’s Operating Committee. In the early 1990s, Heyer was also acting chief of an advertising firm.
By the time he did take on Harry & David, the place was in such chaos that he said he was aghast at its lack of advertising efforts. The failure to advertise was simply crippling the firm, as was the lack of representation with the ASI. The best marketers understand the importance of ASI for its 10,000 distributors and annual sales amounting to billion.
He appeared to have seen the issues straightaway. He could find little evidence of organizational cooperation. The company, he said, had been mired in the same old techniques for too long.
The business has fortunately started to find its legs again. Not only has it moved forward, but it has started to embrace the idea of innovative thinking wholeheartedly. This is all thanks to the pruning and fertilizing efforts of Steve Heyer CEO.
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