BUKABUKU.COM – SELECTION, CONVENIENCE, AND PRICE

For Bukabuku.com, 2009 was a great year. The company closed the year with 37% more revenue than in 2008, which was on top of the 122% jump the year before. Everyone in the company celebrated this success and looked forward to a better 2010.

On the last day of work in 2009, Bukabuku.com’s founders Erwan Salim and Marsela Wewengkang called all their managers to the year-end meeting that would set the path of 2010. Despite the great success, they received signals from the marketplace that the Bukabuku.com’s growth momentum in the past four years had slowed down. While it might be a good time for consolidation after a series of explosive years, the slowdown was perceived to be coming too soon.

They needed to discuss this issue, set new expectation, and prepare the company’s direction for 2010. They had to decide on the following issues:

• Customer backorders and late deliveries: These sometimes led to sales loss and always to customer dissatisfaction. While most of this problem had been solved by increasing on-hand inventory, they felt the need to get to the root cause of the problem.
• Full warehouse capacity: Could they optimize their inventory level or should they look into getting a second warehouse?
• Internal business process and information system: Could they continue to rely on the company’s current processes to support future significant growth?