Skurf is a Swedish mouth-blown glass company with a rich history, known as the part of the “Crystal Kingdom”. Skurf sells to retailers in Sweden only, and the only store they own is on the factory location. The economy is stable but not growing. Besides, they have problems in advertising, like the website layout and exhibition in their store.
For the development of Skurf, we suggest that Skurf maintain the economic curve and make effort to expand. We divide the goal in two steps: Firstly is to expand in Sweden by reaching a boarder range and age groups of customers in Sweden, then to reach customers in Scandinavia countries.
To research more about the current condition of the company, we used tools like”5 forces” “industry segmentation” “entrepreneurial formula” and “Pestel analysis/future scenarios” We found that the KSF(key successful factor)of Skurf is that they have wonderful mouth-blown glass, however, in the red ocean of glass product market, the product is not competitive enough in price and production, compared to the mass produced glass products. However, Skruf has competitive advantage also: The structure of the company could optimize the production process
For this case, we have few recommendations:
1.Skurf stays mostly the same but makes smaller changes to their business, focusing on marketing & communication. They market the company by involving more well-known designers and communicate their history by improving website and social media.This will help Skurf to reach more customers in Sweden and also a younger crowd. Also, Skurf could redesign shop. When affordable, Skurf hires one more manager that can take some work of Kent(CEO of Skurf).
2.Skurf work towards expanding sales in Sweden and Scandinavia. They could open “flagship store” and present Skurf’s product in a more attractive way. They could also consider opening the store together with other glass factories, either from Crystal kingdom or together with independent glassmakers, and at least, find one retailer in Denmark,Finland and Norway. They will also need to hire a sales manager and somebody that takes care of logistics.
This project is for the course “Design Management” in industrial design program in Lund university, finished by a four member group including me.
The outcome of this course was also presented for Kent, CEO of Skurf.
Ruoxi Zeng 