Carter Cleaning Centers

Jennifer Carter graduated from State University in June 2005, and, after considering several job offers, decided to do what she always planned to do go into business with her father, Jack Carter. Jack Carter opened his first Laundromat in 1995 and his second in 1998. The main attraction of these coin laundry businesses for him was that they were capital- rather than labor-intensive. Thus, once the investment in machinery was made, the stores could be run with just one unskilled attendant and none of the labor problems one normally expects from being in the retail service business. The attractiveness of operating with virtually no skilled labor notwithstanding, Jack had decided by 1999 to expand the services in each of his stores to include the dry cleaning and pressing of clothes. He embarked, in other words, on a strategy of related diversification by adding new services that were related to and consistent with his existing coin laundry activities. He added these for several reasons. He wanted to better utilize the unused space in the rather large stores he currently had under the lease. Furthermore, he was, as he put it, tired of sending out the dry cleaning and pressing work that came in from our coin laundry clients to a dry cleaner 5 miles away, who then took most of what should have been our profits. To reflect the new, expanded line of services, he renamed each of his two stores Carter Cleaning Centers, and was sufficiently satisfied with their performance to open four more of the same type of stores over the next 5 years. Each store had its own on-site manager and, on average, about seven employees and annual revenues of about $500,000. It was this six-store chain that Jennifer joined after graduating. Her understanding with her father was that she would serve as a troubleshooter/consultant to the elder Carter with the aim of both learning the business and bringing to it modern management concepts and techniques for solving the business problems and facilitating its growth.

Questions:

1. In line with your course, define the significance of the case?

2. The case narrated that the owner was capital oriented rather than labor-intensive. As an HRM student, what do you think about the philosophy of the owner? Which suggestions you will recommend to utilize labour oriented philosophy in the organization?

3. What suggestions you will provide to Jennifer to link HRM policies and practices with the differentiation strategy of the organization? Justify your answer.