Mary Anderson, an interior designer, artist, and nature lover living new New York City, was convinced by her husband and friends to translate some of her painted silk hangings into pieces for possible sale to the gift and art markets. Anderson recognized that silk was the best medium for portraying her creations because of its translucent beauty, permanence, and fidelity of color as well as texture. But most silks are not appropriate for paintings, since silk is a protein fiber, similar to wool or to human hair. It is only natural for silks to have some irregularities -- sometimes called "slubs". Anderson studied the art of making silk relentlessly, absorbing whatever knowledge she could find on creating silk fabric. After months of experimentation in a dingy Trenton, New Jersey basement, Anderson and some textile friends developed a special silk that had no slubs, therefore equal to the finest in the world.

Next, Anderson had to master the complex process of painting on the silk. Each wall hanging of silk is a technical as well as artistic challenge. A 52-step process is required to convert a sketch into a completed wall hanging. For example, one major creation required 1509 paint strokes to create a forest scene. This level of detail required creating 132 specialized brushes and 56 different colors in order to get just the right effect. Once the strokes, brushes and colors were determined, then a specialized machine could be configured to execute the brush strokes, but each pass of the painted silk included drying time from the last pass, plus reconfiguration of the brushes and colors. Each creation had to be made permanent by spraying a fixing agent on at just the right temperature, where heat could change a delicate piece of silk into a crumpled mass. No American had excelled in creating silk. And when Anderson's creations first appeared, no one understood the quality of the silk, or believed it was hard to create the overall effect of her works.

Anderson began to create in silk what she knew and loved best - nature, particularly the more delicate forest and flower scenes. In her art, Anderson tried to "capture that special moment and setting which conveys the character, charm and loveliness of an early morning or the moment of sunset." After selling her early creations for several years during her lunch hours, her talented husband, Bob, left an outstanding pharmaceutical sales career to "peddle" Anderson's silks full time. Soon Mr. Anderson's extraordinary salesmanship skills, promotional touch, and sense for the art market began to pay off. People liked Anderson's forests and prairies, but bought her flower wall hangings. And Anderson agreeably complied, striving for ever greater perfection on ever more exotic and natural flower creations.

By 2008 some Anderson silks (especially the flowers) had become recognized as collectors' items. An extremely complex piece like "Stelitzia reginae" might sell for $28,500 at retail, and might command much more upon resale. Mary Anderson, then 55 - though flattered by her products' commercial success - considered her art primarily an expression of her love for nature. She felt the importance of portraying vanishing species like the American lady's slipper orchid or the South African leopard orchid, and traveled to remote areas of the world to bring back samples or photographs of rare flowers for study and later rendering into silk paintings. A single company,

Stanton Silks, was the exclusive distributor of Anderson's products to some 175 retail outlets in the United States. Anderson's line included (1) its "Serenity" series of smaller, somewhat simpler pieces, usually selling for less than $100, (2) its profitable middle series of complex designs like the "Field of Poppies" selling from $800 to $5000, and (3) its special artistic pieces (like "Stelitzia reginae" and "Cactus in bloom") which might sell initially for over $20,000.

Individual Anderson silks were increasingly being recognized as outstanding artistic creations and sought by some sophisticated collectors. Production of such designs might be sold out for years in advance, but it was difficult to anticipate which pieces might achieve this distinction. Many of the company's past policies no longer seemed appropriate. And the Andersons wanted to further position the company for the long run.

The Andersons hired you as a consultant to help them with the following. When asked what they wanted from the company, they would respond, "to make the world aware of Mary Anderson's artistic talent, to help world ecology causes by creating appreciation and protection for threatened species, and to build a continuing business that could make them comfortably wealthy, perhaps millionaires." No one goal had great precedence over the others.

Instructions:

what is a game plan to further their company's position for the long run. You will argue for a course of action grounded in a systems approach; that is, solving the problem/opportunity from a big picture standpoint. You will pay special attention to the following:

Analyze how a hobby evolved to a business that is poised for a global reputation,

Analyze how the individual talents of the Andersons are key assets to their business and its future positioning, and

Argue for a course of action that takes into consideration the environment in which the Andersons are going to operate and evaluate its impact on the Andersons' goals.