Fonthill Fire, Inc.

In early 2016, Duncan Balmain was reviewing the disappointing 2015 results of operations for his company (see Exhibit 1). The business had been founded in 1938 by Duncan's great-great grandfather as a modernization of an older iron forge company which Duncan's great-great-great-grandfather had built up over the years since 1902. The company entered the cast iron wood stove business when that market boomed in the early 1970s. By 1977 wood heating stoves was its only product line. The business operated out of leased factory and office space in Fonthill, Ontario which was owned by a family trust.

Business had been very good through the early 2000' s, with a strong market for "environmentally sensitive" heat sources in the region which the Company served. Stove sales in 2013 were $9 million for 30,000 units. By 2015, however, the wood stove was a "declining" product with more than thirty competitors, a well-known manufacturing technology, a shrinking market, heavy price pressure, and intense rivalry. By the mid-2000s, there was a growing sense that wood stoves were an environmental problem (air pollution), more than an environmental solution. Possible environmental legislation was a concern for the industry.

Faced with declining profitability, declining unit sales and substantial excess manufacturing capacity, Fonthill had introduced a new product line in 2014 a combination wood stove and baking oven. This product required a minor modification of a wood stove, adding a brick-lined baking compartment with a hinged door and a heat gauge. It was targeted at individuals who might consider brick oven baking with wood to be an attractive extension of heating with wood. The idea was not original with Fonthill, but there were no major competitors at the time. The oven added only $10 per unit to material and labour costs and Balmain priced the "wood oven" at $50 more than the heating stove alone ($350 vs. $300). The product thus generated a $40 higher contribution margin per unit which encouraged Balmain to try to develop a market for it.

Fonthill distributed its heating stoves through a network of appliance and furnace dealers in Ontario who knew the product well and respected its quality and dependability. For wood stoves, the company did some dealer and customer advertising and sales promotion, but its major marketing effort was the dealer sales force 12 field sales representatives divided into two regions. They all traveled extensively, working to maintain dealer relationships and to build end-user awareness and goodwill, as well as writing sales orders.

When wood ovens were added, Balmain did not expect heavy dealer penetration immediately, so he expanded the sales area substantially. Whereas stoves were sold, essentially, only in Ontario, he negotiated sales outlets for ovens over all the Atlantic provinces and Quebec. By 2015, he had added six oven field sales reps, an oven sales manager, and also established relationships with a great many independent sales agents across Eastern Canada. Establishing the wood oven market also turned out to require much heavier investments in advertising, dealer promotion, dealer discounts and sales incentives. But with steady hard work the business was being established. Fonthill sold 10,000 ovens in 2014 and 20,000 in 2015 of which 5,000 were sold in the core area. The 2015 figure was fully 80% the number of wood stoves sold. Competition was still minimal, which Balmain attributed to the uniqueness of the concept and the strong early lead Fonthill had established with dealers by its concerted marketing program.

Fonthill was selling only a few stoves through the expanded sales network and marketing program, because Balmain was reluctant to push the lower margin product through the higher cost marketing network. Freight cost was also a problem when the shipping distance expanded. Both stoves and ovens were bulky and weighed well over 130 kilograms each. Thus, they were very expensive to ship. Fonthill owned a fleet of trucks which had been expanded from 5 to 10 since the addition of wood ovens to the business. Even though the fleet represented about a $2 million investment, shipping full-load orders in company owned trucks was not uneconomic. But more than half of all shipments went out in partial loads using common carriers and contract haulers. Considering traffic management, dispatching, fleet costs, freight bills, packing cost, and rental charges for public warehouse space, total shipping costs were running about 17% of sales in 2015.

When Duncan Balmain saw the operating results for 2015, he walked into the office of his chief accountant, Caroline Cooper, and asked her how much confidence he should place in the split of operations between stoves and ovens. The loss on stoves was not really surprising to him, given the tough market for that product, but he wasn't sure how Cooper had assigned costs and revenues.

Cooper said she was pretty comfortable with the breakdowns. "This really isn't a complex manufacturing operation for either product, as you well know. The sales breakdown is based on actual sales invoices. It's solid! Manufacturing cost is pretty clean also, since direct product costs are over 54% of the total.

Material and labour costs come from our average cost records which are fairly accurate, since we keep track of those costs on each batch that runs through the shop. General factory overhead, which we consider fixed, was $2,520,000 last year. Of that, $800,000 was depreciation. Rent is $550,000. Factory support costs are $ 1,170,000. I consider these three costs pretty much common to all production, so I assign them on the basis of units produced. Variable manufacturing overhead is another $1.1 million which I also assign based on units. You might argue about the overhead allocations a little," she continued, "but not very much. When we made only stoves, there was no product line allocation to worry about. I suppose now you could go to an allocation based on labour, but the difference would not be large. The ovens each take a little more time to manufacture, but we make fewer total ovens." She gave him a summary of manufacturing costs for the year (Exhibit 2) to look at.

Cooper continued explaining, "Allocating non-manufacturing costs is always a lot more subjective, but the way I split them seems very reasonable to me. Stoves generated more total volume in units and dollars, but ovens have been harder to sell and distribute. Stoves really constitute the base business, with ovens as the incremental, new business. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to charge selling and shipping on the basis of percent of sales dollars across the two products. Then I just split the half million of general expenses equally between the two lines since the sales are about equal. General expenses have not changed much for several years. Since we seem to be in both product lines now for the foreseeable future, and both seem to be generating positive profit contribution, I don't suppose the allocation of SG&A matters much anyway." Balmain thanked her for the update and walked slowly back to his office.

As he studied the results, Balmain thought to himself:

The numbers really do confirm my intuition. The market for stoves is getting so competitive that we just can't seem to make a profit there in spite of our best efforts. We have tried everything I know and we just keep sliding down further and further. But the crazy wood oven is a real "comer." We've turned the corner there and things should get better and better.

I don't like to admit defeat, but I really think we should start phasing out of stoves altogether. If we couldn't even break-even in 2015, after all our hard work, we aren't ever going to do it. I always remember the article by Peter Drucker in which he said, "If you can't make good profit in a product, get out. Focusing on contribution margin is just a trap that will drag you down. You are in business for the long run, and in the long run all costs are relevant. If you can't cover them, don't kid yourself." The secret for getting us back "in the black" is to capitalize on our great start in wood ovens and throw all our efforts there, just like we did with stoves when we first sold them.

Balmain called his Sales Vice President, George Murphy, to tell him that he was just about ready to "pull the plug" on stoves. Murphy was aware of the 2015 financial results and was not in love with the stove business. "I wouldn't object to that, Duncan, even though it would mean a lot of grief in scaling back operations in the shop and in selling and distribution. Without wood stoves, a lot of people would have to go. But I suppose it's better to save the fast-growing half of the business rather than let stoves drag us all down slowly but surely. Since the selling and shipping budgets are each just about two and a half times what they were when we introduced ovens, there are a lot of fairly new people there. So, it's not like we would be laying off twenty-year veterans. We still have a long way to go on ovens, but the trends are all good. I think we could probably sell 30,000 ovens this year if we concentrated on just that one product and held our prices. One "hang up" I still struggle with is that stove orders average ten units while oven orders are only two units on average. We both know that getting orders is what the sales game is all about, but small orders make it harder to amortize the effort. We work a lot harder to sell and distribute an oven outside Quebec than we do for a stove in Quebec, but I know we price ovens a lot higher, too. And, we're still learning that business." Murphy paused for a moment and then concluded, I'm with you Duncan, whatever you decide. We've both got a lot of years invested in this place and I'd hate to see it slip away from us."

REQUIRED

1. Prepare a situational analysis for Fonthill Fire and identify the key success factors for the company.

2. Taking a closer look at cost allocation for manufacturing, selling and shipping expenses, what is your estimate of ovens profit and stoves profit for 2015? Provide quantitative evidence.

3. Should Fonthill drop the stoves product line? Discuss using quantitative and qualitative factors.

4. How much does it cost, on average, to ship an oven outside the core area? Explain your numbers.

5. How much does it cost, on average, to generate a sales order for ovens outside the core area?

6. What is your advice to Duncan Balmain?

6. 

EXHIBIT 12 Results of Operations - 2015 e Ovense Stovese Totale Salese $ 7,000,000 $ 7,500,000 $ 14,500,000 Cost of Goods Sold (Exhibit 2) $ 3,600,000 $ 4,250,000 $ 7,850,000 Gross Margin $ 3,400,000 $ 3,250,000 $ 6,650,000 Selling Cost $ 1,500,000 $ 1,625,000 $ 3,125,000 Shipping Cost $ 1,200,000 $ 1,300,000 $ 2,500,000 Sales Commissions (5%) $ 350,000 $ 375,000 $ 725,000 General Expenses $ 245,000 $ 245,000 $ 490,000 Profit Before Taxes $ 105,000 $ (295,000) $ (190,000) Note: Cost of Goods Sold equals Manufacturing Cost since there was no change in inventory levels for the yeare $ EXHIBIT 2 Manufacturing Costs - 2015 G Totale Ovense Per Unite $e Stovese Per Unite $ $ Materialse Labor and Benefits ($10/hr.) Variable Overheade Fixed Factory Overhead#- Totale S S S S $ 45.00 55.00 S 24.00$ 56.00 S 180.00 $ 900,000 $ 1,100,000 $ 480,000 $ 1,120,000 $ 3,600,000 $ 40.00 s 50.00 S 24.00 S 56.00S 170.00 $ 1,000,000 1,250,000 600,000 1,400,000 4,250,000 ttttttttttttttt voolu 1,900,000 2,350,000 1,080,000 2,520,000 7,850,000 #Fixed Factory Overhead: Depreciation (15 year lives) Rent (110,000 square feet) Factory Support* S S S 800,000 550,000 1,170,000 The factory manager estimated that 60 percent of factory support cost is due to ovens, because of the special problems related to the large- number of small batch factory orders. Ovens cause special problems in scheduling, setup, rework, and heat gauge calibration- t EXHIBIT 12 Results of Operations - 2015 e Ovense Stovese Totale Salese $ 7,000,000 $ 7,500,000 $ 14,500,000 Cost of Goods Sold (Exhibit 2) $ 3,600,000 $ 4,250,000 $ 7,850,000 Gross Margin $ 3,400,000 $ 3,250,000 $ 6,650,000 Selling Cost $ 1,500,000 $ 1,625,000 $ 3,125,000 Shipping Cost $ 1,200,000 $ 1,300,000 $ 2,500,000 Sales Commissions (5%) $ 350,000 $ 375,000 $ 725,000 General Expenses $ 245,000 $ 245,000 $ 490,000 Profit Before Taxes $ 105,000 $ (295,000) $ (190,000) Note: Cost of Goods Sold equals Manufacturing Cost since there was no change in inventory levels for the yeare $ EXHIBIT 2 Manufacturing Costs - 2015 G Totale Ovense Per Unite $e Stovese Per Unite $ $ Materialse Labor and Benefits ($10/hr.) Variable Overheade Fixed Factory Overhead#- Totale S S S S $ 45.00 55.00 S 24.00$ 56.00 S 180.00 $ 900,000 $ 1,100,000 $ 480,000 $ 1,120,000 $ 3,600,000 $ 40.00 s 50.00 S 24.00 S 56.00S 170.00 $ 1,000,000 1,250,000 600,000 1,400,000 4,250,000 ttttttttttttttt voolu 1,900,000 2,350,000 1,080,000 2,520,000 7,850,000 #Fixed Factory Overhead: Depreciation (15 year lives) Rent (110,000 square feet) Factory Support* S S S 800,000 550,000 1,170,000 The factory manager estimated that 60 percent of factory support cost is due to ovens, because of the special problems related to the large- number of small batch factory orders. Ovens cause special problems in scheduling, setup, rework, and heat gauge calibration- t