Case Study Analysis: Sugru, Entrepreneurship, and Business Strategy

This document presents a comprehensive case study analysis of Sugru, focusing on the entrepreneurial journey of Jane ní Dhulchaointigh. It examines her business strategy, highlighting the use of the differentiation focus strategy and the Ansoff growth matrix for sustainability. The analysis includes an opportunity assessment model to identify key opportunities such as international expansion and product innovation, along with an evaluation of associated risks, including economic, operational, and compliance risks, and potential mitigation strategies. The study also explores the entrepreneurial success factors relevant to Sugru's case and provides recommendations for future growth and development. The document provides a detailed overview of Sugru's journey, from initial product development to market expansion, and offers insights into the challenges and successes of building a business.

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP
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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Jane ní Dhulchaointigh strategy.......................................................................................................3
Opportunities...................................................................................................................................6
Business risk analysis......................................................................................................................8
Systematic risk.........................................................................................................................8
Unsystematic risk.....................................................................................................................8
The major types of risks associated with Sugru business include...............................................8
Ways to mitigate risk...................................................................................................................9
Business sustainability...................................................................................................................11
Entrepreneurial critical success factors.........................................................................................14
Recommendations..........................................................................................................................16
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................17
References......................................................................................................................................18

Introduction
Entrepreneurship includes creation, launching, and conduct of a new venture that is generally a
small venture and the people who are capable and ready to create such business opportunities
into reality are known as entrepreneurs. From the case and entrepreneur Jane ní Dhulchaointigh
who had turned bad luck into the sensational DIY glue development, provide an experience that
gained lessons and case to be studied. The purpose of this report is to evaluate and analyse the
strategies, that this entrepreneur adopted and ways he gained opportunity (entrepreneur, 2016).
The report will include the risk involved in the business and critical success factors of the Jane ní
Dhulchaointigh from the case (Ahlin, 2014).
Jane ní Dhulchaointigh glue was one of the companies who have gained large number of fans
providing glue that can fix anything a customer wants, with a mission to provide rubberized glue
and to trade that product to large multinationals such as 3 M. The business did not work
successfully due to just selling of strategy of the London-based product designer. However,
through a transformation and experimenting different variation for six years and understanding
the customer needs and the correct market to be targeted from online retailing at Amazon, she
was able to work out business and double the revenue (Amabile & Rigolizzo, 2015).

Jane ní Dhulchaointigh strategy
Sugru a product created and launched by Jane ní Dhulchaointigh was followed by a business
strategy developed by Jane ní Dhulchaointigh. The strategy is planning for the long term that
includes achieving some goals considering the uncertainty and environment to work (sugru,
2019). Therefore it can be said that the high-level plan is set to be a strategy where the short-term
plan that will help the strategy to accomplish are said to be goals. In order to understand the
strategy adopted by Jane ní Dhulchaointigh poor to generate strategic model presented below
will be analysed.

According to this model, the strategy adopted can be based on two elements that is the market in
which Jane ní Dhulchaointigh would like to compete and the source of competitive advantage for
Sugru. From this model, it can be said that there are four alternative strategies that Jain could
have adopted in order to gain a sustainable competitive advantage in the market. The four
strategies include differentiation leadership, differentiation focus, cost focus and cost leadership
strategy. Since the company was the focus over single product range that is glue manufacturing,
the investment in research and time given to the product development was used which makes the
cost leadership and cost focus strategy inappropriate to be adopted (Bottani & Galli, 2017).
According to the grid, the most appropriate strategy in which Jane ní Dhulchaointigh product
launch fall In is a differentiation focus strategy. According to this strategy, the source of
competitive advantage is product differentiation that is innovation through the product launch as
it was a glue developer, which is helpful in sticking almost anything possible which was a new
concept and being research on 5000 different variants (Chou & Shao, 2016).
However, initially, the market targeted by the company was narrow and with single product
variant. From this strategy adopted by Jane ní Dhulchaointigh it can be said that the strategy was
quite suitable according to the product and opportunity, However, she could have focused over
the broad market in order to gain more customers and gain competitive advantage. Going for
foreign market strategy seems to be effective for Sugru, Which included launching products
through retail e-commerce business that is Amazon to understand the need of customer
according to the location that turns out to be the US as the most of the orders came from the
United States. Moreover, the patent protection was taken by Jane ní Dhulchaointigh across India,
US, China and Europe even after the product was only sold in America. This reflects that Jain

was a visionary leader and directed the company towards the international market (Dewald &
Osiyevskyy, 2015).
The key strength of the company identified through the case is thinking internationally, which
could increase the opportunity for the company to expand the business. Patent protection is the
strength of Sugru, which has led to restricting other companies to imitate the formula and offered
the international market with imitating Jane ní Dhulchaointigh idea. However, there was some
weakness of the business like focus over a single product that could decrease until the
opportunity for the company in near future and the success of the company will only be
dependent on the single product that is Sugru. Another weakness observed was the initial shelf
life of the product was only for six months, which is quite low and may lead to the threat of
being expired quickly (Okpara, 2017).

Opportunities
For analysing the opportunity that Jane ní Dhulchaointigh has capitalised on could be done
through an opportunity assessment model that includes three major elements that its competitors,
market statistics, entrepreneur characteristics. Since the company has included patent across the
international market the competition for entering into the industry considering the particular glue
product was eliminated, which was one of the opportunity that the Jane ní Dhulchaointigh has
capitalised. One of the competitors of Sugru will be in adhesive glue company called fevikwik
that is manufactured by Pidilite company (fevikwik, 2019). The company is offering a similar
product range than that of Sugru in India, which has also tapped by Jane ní Dhulchaointigh for
patent rights. Considering the market statistics the growth rate of the product could be static, the
reason being limited use of the product, the reason being limited use of the product. The last
element includes the characteristic of Jane ní Dhulchaointigh that includes clear vision, decision
maker, innovative thinking and precise planning. Moreover believe in herself was one of the
characteristics that led the company to transform from a bad look to a sensational product
(Nyberg et al., 2016).
Through this model it can be said that the key opportunities identified and capitalised by Jane ní
Dhulchaointigh were International expansion, product innovation, current promotional
techniques to be used like launched product use through a blog page and integrate or in gauge
customer for discussion in order to increase product and brand recognition. Another opportunity
capitalize by Jane ní Dhulchaointigh included understanding the sales data and the need of the
product according to the location that turns out to be Americans being interested in the product
and help the company to enter into that market in the US. Improvement was another report unity

that the company has considered by following up the customer feedback and repeatedly
enhancing the product according to that feedback so as to sustain in the market (Koryak, 2015).
However, the opportunities that the company has gained come with some things as well like the
threat of new entrants that is a company launching a similar product or a product fulfilling
similar needs of the customer, decrease in the use of the product as the company was solely
dependent on a single product (Miao et al., 2017).

Business risk analysis
There is an old saying higher the risk higher is the return. Every business comes with risk bearer
for Jane ní Dhulchaointigh there were two types of risk that is systematic risk and unsystematic
risk.
Systematic risk
Systematic risk is the risk that is and diversity able, which cannot be diverse or minimized, for
example, some of the systematic risks for Sugru could be fluctuation in currencies as the
company plans to expand internationally; and inflation could be one of the economic risks to the
company while investing into the international market.
Unsystematic risk
Another risk that is an unsystematic risk for Sugru included Increasing competition, Operational
risk like the inability for the product to perform well, Change in customer preference, Obsolete
technology. It can be said that unsystematic risk can be diversified through taken various steps in
the strategic decision by the company. For instance, it could be possible that in the near future
the glue could become obsolete technology for which a better technological process could be
implemented in order to stick products that are broken more efficiently (Huggins & Thompson,
2015).
The major types of risks associated with Sugru business include
Economic risk – The economic condition in a nation is one of the major cause for threat which
may affect the cost to the company, and could be responsible for reducing the sales of the
company like recession phase of economy (Read, 2013).

Operational risk – these are the risk associated with every day work and operations perform in
the organization, for instance customer service process. In case of inability to perform the task as
per the standard, this may influence the risk of task completion within the organization.
Compliance risk – the rules regulations pertaining to laws of New Zealand, may change in
future, which could be for betterment of the company, or may affect adversely in the form of
conduct of business. It also includes risk of violating regulations or occurrence of any legal error.
Interest rate risk- The rate of interest on loan or from any financial institution may increase in
near future, but this may affect the profit margin for the company, as the cost for the company
would increase due to increase in interest paid by the company (Lawrence, 2015).
Ways to mitigate risk
The unsystematic risk can be mitigated, for which some of the recommendations to Sugru would
be
1. Control strategy
Four alternative risk mitigation strategies are acceptance, avoidance, control or reduce transfer.
Among these four risk mitigation strategies, the recommended strategy for Sugru includes
control or reduction. In order to control the risk, the focus of Jane ní Dhulchaointigh must be on
the decision-making process that will include finding flaws in the product prior to the happening
of threat or risk in order to improve the product accuracy and ability to improve the product
designing that could be turned out to be obsolete. This strategy may also include mixing of
products that is increasing the number of products by the company in order to diversify the risk,
the diversification of financial risk of losing the revenue from this particular single product that
is Sugru (Hafenbrack et al., 2017).

2. Contingency plans – It is already known that the future is not certain and there could be
various acts that is uncertain and may affect the business adversely. These would include
systematic risk, which is difficult to mitigate, as discussed above. However, in such case the
company attempt to recover the loss faced due to uncertain happening. The contingency plan is
alternative plan for the risk of failure or loss to the company, that must be prepared and ready to
be implemented well before the actual happening so that quick decision can be taken at the time
of risk happening (Pappas, 2016).

Business sustainability
Figure 1: (Source: (blog.oxfordcollegeofmarketing, 2019)
In order to assist the sustainability of Jane ní Dhulchaointigh business that is if Sugru will last or
it will fizzle out could be analysed through Ansoff growth matrix. According to the matrix the
great is based on two elements that is the products that the company products and the market that
the company is offering. The strategy according to the grid that will lead the Jane ní
Dhulchaointigh business to grow in the future and to sustain in the market instead of fizzle out
would be market development and diversification strategy (Gentile, 2010). This included four
alternative strategies that this product development strategy, diversification strategy, market
development strategy, market penetration strategy. From the case, it can be said that the
company has gained opportunity through market development strategy, which included sorting
out for the best alternative markets for the Sugru and looking forward to developing the new