The company Harry & David is a famous as one of the starters of fruit sales through mail order. The company started out with a huge plantation for pears as its main source of fruit. Owned by Wasserstein & Company, Harry & David had its high moments but suffered from years of down moments until Steve Heyer CEO took over.
Heyer found a ton of things to do when he set to work reviving this concern. Harry & David was at that time looking at negative profits, suffering terribly from the recession. The remedy Heyer enforced began with his retrenchment of some top-tier officers and redistribution of their old salaries into salaries for more sales managers.
It was a bold move, as the new CEO let go of “underperformers … in the senior executive ranks," as Heyer called them. The beauty of Heyer's gambit was that it let the business save huge amounts of money without having to cut back on wages. One can see the value of Heyer's remedy given the awful state of paychecks at the moment.
According to Heyer, there was great redundancy in the organization. One of the group's deficiencies was in the willingness to consider alterations to the old way of doing things. Heyer, however, happens to have no fears of change.
He once delivered a speech that highlighted the need for innovative thinking in business. He challenged them to challenge the convention and to empower the customers they serve. He predicted a market with empowered consumers who personalized and customized products.
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. In a stroke of genius, he directed Starwood's marketing departments to repackage the product, stressing that it was not so much a room that was being sold but rather the possibility of creating memorable experiences.
At some point, Heyer was working for Turner Broadcasting. He also held a position of power with AOL Time Warner then. Heyer is not without experience in advertising either, having been a top-tier executive for an ad company before.
According to Heyer, one of the biggest issues with Harry & David when he took it on was the business simply did not have any advertising or links with the ASI. Had it only advertised before, Heyer believed the company would not have gone as low as it did. It was crucial to be link to the Advertising Specialty Institute.
The new CEO seemed to have quickly identified the problem. He noted that a huge problem had to do with the rift between two of the company's biggest sections. Because of that, Harry & David simply could not produce current solutions for current issues.
Today, Harry and David is picking up the scattered pieces and putting them together in beautiful harmony. Not only has it moved forward, but it has started to embrace the idea of innovative thinking wholeheartedly. This is due to the work of Steve Heyer CEO, when he took time to prune away the rotten branches and sowed fertilizer into this company's soil.
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