Situation
A major international supplier of plumbing fixtures received intel that one of its main competitors had grown its US sales by more than 8% over the previous year, and the client wanted to understand the nature of this growth.
Approach
- Spoke with key employees at the client’s competitor to validate this growth and provide insight into strategic decisions within the company
- Conducted in-depth interviews with 10 distributors of plumbing fixtures to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the client and its competitor
- Assessed the size and growth of the market for the client’s core products
- Provided key insights into the competitor's business, including sales estimates by product type, brand positioning in residential and commercial construction, key relationships with major hotel chains, distribution channel analysis, pricing, and product differentiators
- Analyzed the competitor’s strategic positioning to uncover the nature of its recent growth
Results
The Freedonia Custom Research team verified that the competitor had experienced US growth of 8%, but all growth was due to favorable currency conditions for the foreign-based company. In fact, the competitor had experienced a slight decline in US sales on a constant-currency basis. We were also able to provide the client with key insights into the relative positioning of the two companies to assist with our client's strategic planning.