Damon Rankin

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IKEA: High End Design for All
Damon Rankin
Posted on December 8, 2015 at 10:25 pm
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On December 13, 2015, Damon Rankin commented on IKEA: High End Design for All :

Haochen it looks like some people in the press have had similar experiences:
http://www.forbes.com/2007/04/12/walmart-ikea-depot-ent-sales-cx_lh_0412customerservice.html

Based on my review of the annual report it doesn’t look like the company has made any attempts to specifically resolve this issue. However, IKEA has committed to giving 17% raises to about half of its US employees. Hopefully, that will allow IKEA to hire better customer service and delivery employees.

On December 13, 2015, Damon Rankin commented on Pernod Ricard – achieving growth through premiumisation :

Thanks for the intriguing post.

It is surprising to see that this company is highly decentralized, with each brand being run from its country of origin. The premiumisation strategy seems like it would require a great deal of centralization to ensure consistency. However, in this case it looks like Pernod Ricard has turned decentralization into a significant advantage, perhaps the locally based teams are better suited to explain the unique properties of their brands.

On December 13, 2015, Damon Rankin commented on Efes Russia: How operations react to regulations :

Thanks for the interesting post.
Some food companies in the US, especially soft drink producers, may face similarly punitive regulations on the sale of their products. It looks like Efes has been relatively successful in managing the regulations, despite a decline in overall sales they improved market share. It will be interesting to see what other strategies Efes employs and whether their approach can be applied to soda producers.

On December 13, 2015, Damon Rankin commented on Zenefits: Disrupting Human Resources Management :

This is a great post about an innovator in a rarely discussed space.

As your post notes, health insurance brokerage is a lucrative industry and it looks like Zenefits faces a wide range of competitors. Companies like BenefitsConnect are selling software to traditional brokers so that the brokers can compete with Zenefits. At the high end of the market, Zenefits faces competitors like ADP and SAP who may use their capital to build better tools for small businesses. It will be interesting to see if Zenefits will continue to succeed as others begin to focus on the space.