Luke Althorps Group Report: Analysis and Solutions for Sales Growth

This report investigates the declining turnover and sales at Luke Althorps Group, a national retailer specializing in food, clothing, and homeware. The analysis identifies key issues such as poor consumer service, declining quality of clothing goods, and sizing problems. To address these challenges, the report proposes solutions including staff training, quality improvement initiatives, and improved sizing strategies. Staff training is recommended as the most suitable solution, focusing on enhancing employee morale, job satisfaction, and adaptability to new technologies. The implementation of these solutions requires specific resources, timelines, and financial investments, all detailed within the report to facilitate sustainable growth and improved profitability for Luke Althorps Group.

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Luke Althorps Group Report
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1LUKE ALTHORPS GROUP REPORT
Executive Summary
Luke Althorps is dealing with issues related to decreasing turnover and sales that is impacting
company’s steady growth. The company is dealing with poor consumer service issues that are
affecting revenue of the company. Luke Althorps Group’s sales margin is observed to be
declining because of declining quality of clothing goods offered by the company. The objective
of the report is to analyze the issues faced by the business of Luke Althorps Group based on
which suitable solutions can be recommended to the organization that can facilitate the company
in improving its sustainable position.Among all the effective recommended solutions, most
suitable solution to the decreased sales and profit margin issue faced by the company is deemed
to be staff training. Providing necessary training can enhance employee morale and job
satisfaction along with increasing their capacity to adapt to new garment manufacturing based
new technologies.

2LUKE ALTHORPS GROUP REPORT
Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
Description of Issues............................................................................................................3
Description of Solutions......................................................................................................5
Solution 1: Staff Training................................................................................................5
Solution 2: Quality Improvement....................................................................................7
Solution 3: Improving Sizing.........................................................................................10
Recommended Solution.....................................................................................................10
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................11
References..........................................................................................................................13

3LUKE ALTHORPS GROUP REPORT
Introduction
Luke Althorps is positioned as a national retailer specialized in offering food, clothing
and homeware. This is a traditional organization that offers quality offerings to middle-income
and middle-class consumers. The company is dealing with issues related to decreasing turnover
and sales that is impacting company’s steady growth (Foley, Watts and Wilson 2018). Profits are
observed to be decreasing because of affected turnover of the company after Christmas which
has further resulted in stagnation of company’s growth. The objective of the report is to analyze
the issues faced by the business of Luke Althorps Group based on which suitable solutions can
be recommended to the organization that can facilitate the company in improving its sustainable
position. The likely issues are identified to be poor consumer service, clothing items quality and
sizing of items. For revealing the issues that is impacting company’s profits decline opinions will
be gathered from the target audiences those are major staff of the company including Director
(Fashion), Operations, Marketing, Finance and Personnel staff(Hanuska et al. 2016). Moreover
the most suitable among the recommended solutions will be provided to the company along with
describing the timescale and resources needed for implementing such solutions.
Description of Issues
From analyzing the opinion provided by the staff and the consumers of Luke Althorps
Group, it has been observed that the likely reasons those have contributed to decline in revenue
of the company’s fashion department are indicated below:
 Poor consumer service:Luke Althorps Group is dealing with poor consumer service
issues that are affecting revenue of the company. The fashion retailer is observed not to

4LUKE ALTHORPS GROUP REPORT
offer a convenience or pleasant experience for the consumers (Hashan et al. 2017).
Moreover, negative reputation regarding the products offered by the company is affecting
sales of the fashion retailer. Employee engagement is observed to be lacking among the
sales staff of the company and lack of enthusiasm and motivation among employees
resulted in delivering poor consumer service (Huq, Chowdhury and Klassen 2016). These
employees are also observed to have lack of knowledge regarding products or policies of
the fashion brands of Luke Althorps Group because of which the sales staff are not that
capable to sell goods suitable with their demands. Unresolved consumer complaints are
also evidenced that is serving as a hurdle in attaining maximum satisfaction of the
consumers. Lack of proper guidance and training of employees on consumer care has
affected delivering effective consumer service through selling fashion products (Kant
Hvass 2014).
 Quality of clothing goods:Luke Althorps Group’s sales margin is observed to be
declining because of declining quality of clothing goods offered by the company. Such
issue took place because of quality awareness absence and more specifically because of
non-adherence to quality control guidelines. Moreover, unavailability of effective quality
monitoring tools in the company has resulted in such issue (Lee et al. 2016). From
opinions gathered from the staff and the consumers of the company it is revealed that
quality monitoring measures are observed to be lacking in the group that is affecting
measurement of quality parameters in manufacturing of fashion apparels. Moreover, it is
also been gathered from the review that use of inferior quality raw materials has been
observed in the company for attaining cost control (McLaren et al. 2016). This has

5LUKE ALTHORPS GROUP REPORT
resulted in issue related to using poor fabrics and production of defective garments
causing disappointment to consumers and contributing to low sales margin.
 Sizing of goods:This issue took place because of existence of untrained checking
personnel at check points. These staff has the responsibility of checking a number of
parameters for segregating the defective garments from the properly stitched ones. These
personnel are not properly trained to guide operators regarding the manner to make a
correct stich causing faulty sizing of goods manufactured (Morris and Staritz 2017). In
addition, such issue also took place due to increased pressure from production managers
and supervisors for making rapid production. As a result the staff at manufacturing
garments is more focused on delivering quantity than quality and does not focus on
making a proper stitch (Xavier, Moutinho and Moreira 2015). Due to lack of better
training and enthusiasm among workers to deliver good quality products, staff at garment
manufacturing department do not focus on rectifying defects of skipped and unbalanced
stitches, seam grin, improper seam density along with damage caused by stitched
wrongly (Nayak and Padhye 2018).
Description of Solutions
Certain effective solutions are proposed for Luke Althorps Group that can facilitate the
company to address its issues related to low sales and profitability. These solutions are explained
below:
Solution 1: Staff Training
Through staff training Luke Althorps Group can focus on improving consumer service
for attaining better consumer engagement along with improving employee performance. Training

6LUKE ALTHORPS GROUP REPORT
employees must also be focused on improving employee morale and satisfaction along with
keeping them updated with developments. Staff training must be provided to the employees
through providing them effective training tools that can facilitate the employees involved in
garments manufacturing to grow and enhance their job performance. Luke Althorps Group must
develop the ability to offer suitable training based on needs of employees through developing a
well-defined process that can help employees enhance their job performance and grow in the
company. Staff motivation initiative of the group will include three major aspects including
training sessions along with staff bonus and benefits. Resources needed for staff training by the
company include training reference materials and aids for trainers and materials needed for
demonstrations of training station activity.
Effort Required/ Timeline
Role Headcount Effort
Training Lead 1 500 hours
Training Developer 2 600 hours
1100 hours
Financial Resources
Description Budget
Headcount – additional training staff of 3 20,000 pounds
Training software licenses – User Productivity Kits 3500 pounds
23,500 pounds

7LUKE ALTHORPS GROUP REPORT
Solution 2: Quality Improvement
Quality improvement initiative of Luke Althorps Group is recommended to follow four
steps in delivering superior quality garments that is explained under:
 Research: To deal with issue related with quality improvement of fashion garments,
suitable research must be conducted regarding the type of fabrics that can have durability
in practice.
 Educate: After carrying out such research, the garment designers of the group will be
educated regarding making better design decisions.
 Establish: The Company is also recommended to develop acceptable quality standards
and must ensure that all its fabric suppliers follow them in delivering superior quality
goods for attaining consumer satisfaction.
 Maintain: The group is also recommended to maintain a clean and dry workplace that
will include maintenance of storage rooms, shipping areas along with garment
manufacturing machines.
In order to address the issue caused by poor quality checking while manufacture garments,
Luke Althorps Group must consider carrying out visual monitoring and fabric inspection. This is
recommended in order to make sure that the manufactured garments are of expected quality,
defective fabrics are rejected and defect data is evaluated through recognizing sources of quality
problems. Resources those are necessary for quality improvement process in the fashion
garments company include machine vision for detecting defects and tally sheet for recording
defect and its causes.
Ref # Resources Complete Wk 1 Wk Wk Wk 4

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2 3
Meet with each vendor's implementation specialist Jim
Review implementation plan with implementation specialist and harmonize
into one master plan for your organization
Yes
Review contract with implementation specialist to ensure full understanding
of project scope
Yes
Discuss and plan chart conversion strategy if applicable to application HIM Team
Gain internal approval for chart conversion strategy Jim Yes
Discuss and plan roll out strategy Implementation Team
Gain approval for roll out strategy Jim No
Develop organizational support plan
Establish quality improvement structure
Form project implementation steering committee
Identify and populate domain teams
Identify design manager
Identify lead
Staff IT for ongoing support
Identify third party support, if necessary
Identify and prepare super users
Define organization decision making structure
Learn vendor reporting structure
Review communication plan
Review/update communication plan as applicable (incorporate into this
project plan)
Insert messages and messengers for communication plan
Develop documentation requirements and standards (e.g., set up
directories, file naming conventions, groupware)
Plan for meeting processes, agendas, minutes, and follow up
Initiate issues management process

9LUKE ALTHORPS GROUP REPORT
Start an issues log
Plan for regular review of project progress and milestone completion
Establish escalation process
Initiate change control process
Plan to use a formal change request and approval process
Manage changes to system (e.g., customization, priorities, budget)
Plan to archive system documentation
Review and sign HIO participation agreement
Application design
Affirm goals and metrics
Plan for post-live measurement
Identify workflow and process improvements
Implement chart conversion
Identify specific timing and staff for scanning/abstracting
Identify documents to be scanned
Acquire scanner
Train scanning staff or contract with scanning company
Scan documents according to plan
Quality check scanning results
Identify data to abstract for pre-loading
Train abstract staff, if applicable
Abstract data according to plan
Quality check abstracting results
Mark charts "closed" following scanning/abstracting
Financial Resources

10LUKE ALTHORPS GROUP REPORT
Description Budget
Maintenance, development and testing of quality
improvement tools
30,000 pounds
Quality improvement tool implementation – User
Productivity Kits
3500 pounds
33,500 pounds
Solution 3: Improving Sizing
To deal with the issue of consumer dissatisfaction in Luke Althorps Group, improving
sizing of the manufactured goods are recommended to create sizing guide charts, make increased
investments in hi-tech sizing technology intended for the e-commerce consumers and
understanding the company’s major market niche. Moreover, in order to improve sizing issue
taking place in Luke Althorps Group, the company is recommended to extend its sizing range,
offer better consumer feedback and prompting the consumers to “try before they buy” to attain
fashion garments fitting to their desired consumer sizes. The necessary resources those are
needed for improving sizing include measuring guide and employing sewing measurements for
developing better fitting garments.
Financial Resources
Description Budget
skipped and balanced stitches machine implementation 20,000 pounds
seam grin and seam density monitoring tools 3400 pounds
23,400 pounds

11LUKE ALTHORPS GROUP REPORT
Recommended Solution
Among all the effective recommended solutions, most suitable solution to the decreased
sales and profit margin issue faced by the company is deemed to be staff training. This is
selected to be the most suitable recommendation to be followed in Luke Althorps Group as
training employees on quality improvement initiatives and on improving sizing on garments can
enhance the situation of poor consumer service prevailing within the company. Offering training
to employees to deliver exceptional consumer service can facilitate Luke Althorps Group in
attaining increased sale and revenue. Training staff on necessary quality guidelines and
consumer feedback handling can facilitate them in developing necessary skills for offering better
consumer service, enhanced work safety practices and productivity improvements.
Providing necessary training can enhance employee morale and job satisfaction along
with increasing their capacity to adapt to new garment manufacturing based new technologies.
Luke Althorps Group must develop the ability to offer suitable training based on needs of
employees through developing a well-defined process that can help employees enhance their job
performance and grow in the company. Staff motivation initiative of the group will include three
major aspects including training sessions along with staff bonus and benefits. Experiencing
training costs can facilitate in attainingprofitableresults for the company. Effective training can
be provided to the staff of the company through analyzing skills which is needed to keep them
involved. Moreover, the existing gaps that is revealed in the company can be addressed that can
enhance sales.