Business Coaching

Starbucks is maximizing its sales by selling Seattle's Best.

This fall, Seattle’s Best Coffee—a former competitor Starbucks acquired seven years ago—will be sold in about 30,000 fast-food outlets, supermarkets and coffee houses, the company said. Currently, Seattle’s Best coffee and coffee beans are sold in Seattle’s Best’s own shops inside nearly 500 Borders bookstores, in about 2,500 supermarkets, and Burger King, Subway and AMC movie theaters sell the coffee brand, too.

Starbucks is also eventually looking to sell the Seattle’s Best brand in convenience stores, vending machines, mobile trucks, coffee carts and drive-through kiosks.

Why the big push for Seattle’s Best everywhere instead of Starbucks? This move is made to take out McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts, who have specialty coffees and espresso-based drinks for lower prices than Starbucks. Especially during the recession, Starbucks suffered a decline in sales.

Can this tactic work for other companies in other industries? In business coaching, thinking outside the box is key, and coming up with fresh ways to market your product or maximize profits is necessary. Can business coaches use this Starbucks/Seattle’s Best example to help other companies?

Looks like Louis Vuitton purses won't be on sale anymore.

According to this week’s Bloomberg BusinessWeek, high-end retailers are back to selling full-price items and not doing as many promotions or discounts to attract customers.

According to SpendingPulse data, the prices for U.S. luxury goods increased 11% this March from a year ago. Pre-recession, the average price of a luxury handbag was $2,000; last year this decreased to $1,600, and this year that price increased to $1,800.

With the luxury market seemingly on the rebound, this would appear to be a good sign…yet unemployment rates are either stagnant or decreasing still.

With this new data, does this mean businesses can start — just start — to exhale a sigh of relief? Business coaches, would you advise your clients any differently with information about the luxury consumer and the potentially changing economy?

Lately, and probably in the future still, people have had a habit of blaming things that go wrong in their business on the economy. But unfortunately, the economy can’t be the only thing small businesses blame.

Sure, the financial crisis didn’t help the small business environment. But other things have been slowly changing as well, which have also slowly but surely been affecting small businesses.

For instance, cheaper imports from overseas and vast improvements and updates in technology changes the way things are run. When cashflow is in order business is booming, it’s easy to miss the effects of these changes. But when the economy is bad and business decreases, the effects are magnified.

Small businesses need to stop blaming the economy, but instead, start working on the issues that are really effecting their business – changes in demand, competition, products and services.

With business coaching, it’s important to keep this in mind. Instead of simply blaming something for what’s going wrong, it’s imperative to fix the problem or make changes…because otherwise, you might be out of business!