BB304 - American Apparel: Strategic Recommendations for Revival

This report analyzes the challenges faced by American Apparel and provides strategic recommendations for its revival and growth in the international market. It begins with a brief background of the company and the clothing industry, followed by an examination of current trends and threats. The report identifies American Apparel's core competencies and explores the reasons for its struggles, despite possessing these strengths. It assesses the company's localization efforts and suggests improvements. Furthermore, it addresses ethical issues associated with American Apparel and proposes solutions. The report concludes with detailed short-term and long-term recommendations, including differentiation and diversification strategies, forward integration, mergers, and cost leadership, to enhance operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. This document is available on Desklib, where students can access a wealth of study resources, including past papers and solved assignments.

International Business
Running head: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Submitted by

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS 1
Table of Contents
Recommendations for American Apparel..............................................................................................2
Short-term recommendations.............................................................................................................2
Long-term recommendations.............................................................................................................2
References.............................................................................................................................................4

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS 2
Recommendations for American Apparel
Short-term recommendations
American Apparel is the well-known and leading brand in the clothing industry as it
continuously dealing with the innovation by offering the outstanding customer services to
their consumers. There are certain recommendations that can be beneficial for American
Apparel to enhance its business growth and become more successful as compared to its key
market players. American Apparel should use differentiation strategy in different areas like
marketing and sales, research and development, operation, human resources,and logistics. It
should also emphasize more on the needs and expectation of customers. The company should
offer more option and a wider range of products and services. In this way, it should make
amendments to some product and should add new option regarding clothing in order to
influence a large number of people. It should recruit some employees who can facilitate the
home delivery services to customers in order to gain the revenues and to obtain the more
profit (Grøgaard, 2012).
American Apparel has many key market players hence it should more emphasize on their
strategy by implementing the innovative technology particularly, to keep trendy and quality
cloths to sustain the goodwill. It should also take the feedback from the customer after
purchase and assess the reviews of customers about the product and make improvement in the
product according to this. It would be beneficial to attain the mission of company (Cavusgil,
Knight, Riesenberger, Rammal, and Rose, 2014).
Long-term recommendations
American Apparel should also use diversification strategy. This strategy can be practiced to
enter into the new market. The corporation can select to diversify their product into a new
market like Asia and America in which demand for clothing is enlarging. American Apparel
can also apply the product differentiation strategy in order to differentiate its products

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS 3
through the product of competitors. It would be effective for American Apparel to influence
the new consumers and attain the competitive benefits successfully. American Apparel can
also involve the forward integration by starting its more distribution center in foreign nations
in which the market is larger with considerable high size. American Apparel can procure the
manufacturing units from labor-intensive nations in order to decline the cost of
manufacturing clothing and also attain the added benefits of creativity from new staffs.
American Apparel can use the mergers strategies. The existing challenges faced by the
clothing industry also facilitate the opportunity to merge with clothing suppliers from outside
nation. Thus, American Apparel can identify interested suppliers for mergers and decline the
burden of material obtainability (Shenkar, Luo, and Chi, 2014).
American Apparel can use the cost leadership strategy in order to enhance the operational
efficiency ofthe organizational process. This strategy will be beneficial to emphasize on
optimum utilization of available raw material, natural resources,and technology. It would also
decline the expense of products and services and will gain the profitability of the company.
Thus, American Apparel can use unique strategy to satisfy their customers by offering the
trendy and quality products that are in demand in current scenario as, nowadays, customer
focuses of trendy and modern lifestyle (Forsgren, and Johanson, 2014).

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS 4
References
Cavusgil, S. T., Knight, G., Riesenberger, J. R., Rammal, H. G., & Rose, E. L. (2014).
International business. Australia: Pearson.
Forsgren, M., & Johanson, J. (2014). Managing networks in international business. UK:
Routledge.
Grøgaard, B. (2012). Alignment of strategy and structure in international firms: An empirical
examination. International Business Review, 21(3), 397-407.
Shenkar, O., Luo, Y., & Chi, T. (2014). International business. UK: Routledge.