Marketing C212
I. Company Background
Levolor Blinds has been a leading manufacturer of window blinds, shades, draperies and drapery hardware since it’s founding in 1914. Levolor has been operating as a division of Newell Rubbermaid, a worldwide marketer of consumer and commercial products, from its Atlanta, Georgia headquarters since 1993. The Levolor division has just recently been purchased by Hunter Douglas Group, a Dutch multinational corporation who currently is the world leader in production of window blinds and window treatments.
The Hunter Douglas Group currently consists of approximately 168 companies, with its head office located in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Hunter Douglas maintains corporate headquarter offices in North America, South America, Asia and Australia, and relies upon 68 manufacturing and 99 assembly and marketing operations in more than 100 countries. The Window and Blind division of Hunter Douglas is currently headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, and the company intends to maintain the Levolor offices and branding as an individual division from its current Atlanta location. The incorporation of the Levolor product line into the current line of blinds from Hunter Douglas, including such branding as Luxaflex, Duette, Silhouette, Luminette, Vignette, and Pirouette gives the company a wide reaching global presence in the marketplace further securing its leading stronghold with approximately 52 percent of the market share, and the combined company effort shall be referred to as Levolor Hunter Douglas (LHD).
II. Proposed Product Introduction to Market
The R&D department of the LHD Blind division has been diligently working on two new proposed product offerings to compliment the current LHD window blind line. While LHD, and other blind manufacturers have in recent years introduced lines of window blinds that utilize smart technology to operate blind functions such as opening, closing and tilt and...