Consumer and Business Services
The greatest asset of any retail, consumer product, or business services company is its reputation and its perceived value among consumers. In today’s modern marketplace, consumers continue to rapidly shift loyalties and allegiances between concepts and brands. Within the large and diverse consumer and business services sectors, the potential power of brands to create value is a common theme.
With the urgency to develop a competitive advantage across the value chain, companies are being constrained in their ability to grow and maintain profit margins as a result of market saturation, growing competitive pressures, increase in the number of alternative sales channels, and less loyal consumers.
Sectors include:
- Hospitality & Gaming
- Consumer Electronics
- Food and Beverage
- Sports and Leisure
- Transportation Services
- Emerging Brands
- Household Products
- Personal Care
- Professional / Marketing Services
- Transaction Processing
- Outsourced Services
Demand and consumer expectations continue to rise with increased development of a population desiring additional conveniences. Changing demographics and consumer expectations are forcing companies to find new ways to diversify, grow and penetrate new markets; and the massive pressure from online and large-scale retail companies has caused significant consolidation activity among specialty players.
Today, consumers around the world are concerned with how a company manufacturers its product and whether it is managing for continued sustainability through attention to economic, environmental, and social performance. Maintaining a bond with buyers is critical; but easily undermined if purchasers believe that companies are selling products unworthy of their reputations or made in a non-sustainable, non-environmentally friendly manner.
In practically every country, the on-time movement of goods is crucial. In both the business and consumer markets, there is increasing pressure on businesses to outsource these activities and on distribution companies to deliver items faster and cheaper, in ways that precisely reflect the features of the product and the needs of the customer.
Specialist distributors who understand and adapt to clients’ needs can earn high returns in a market where ‘commoditized’ players face continuous pressure on margins. The most successful distributors build strong, ongoing relationships with their clients in which they become integral partners to the clients’ operations. By understanding and adapting to clients’ needs, they can often negotiate sole distribution rights, providing stable revenue streams and a sound platform for expansion.
In hospitality and leisure, the sectors are large and diverse. Sub-sectors include travel distribution, hotels and resorts, local leisure, and gaming and hospitality. Across the world leisure spend has increased significantly faster than GDP in many markets. As with all consumer markets it benefits from rising wealth, but firms must navigate the changes in spending arising from strong demographic trends and shifts in taste.
Highly sensitive to economic and competitive market conditions, the hospitality and leisure sector continues to be capital, management, personnel, energy, maintenance, and technology intensive. Operators who add value through the quality and uniqueness of their service attract repeat business from sophisticated clients. This places them in a far more attractive market than those companies that have no differentiation and are forced to compete on price.
In general, people businesses demand high standards of management, but this is even more so when making acquisitions. To justify acquisition growth, the new owners need the key value creators (often the former owners) to stay with the business and deliver results. For many companies, a sound repositioning strategy is becoming the only effective way to maximize earnings.
Digital entertainment has been a significant contributor to the growth for retailers of consumer electronics. Recruitment consulting has been one of the more lucrative sectors for business service providers in the US and expansion into China represents a significant opportunity for staffing service providers.
Be they direct marketers, established hospitality, or a fast-growing new service offering, our combined years of experience are brought to bear in the proper positioning of our clients story. We understand the industry dynamics and bring the right insight and execution to each individual transaction.
We look to sponsor buyout and growth businesses who have capitalized on the use of intellectual capital to build strong client loyalty, demonstrated excellence in manufacturing controls, compelling brand positioning, consistent strong design and rounded product and service offerings.
We stress the underlying fundamentals of purchasing, niche marketing, effective pricing and distribution models, and customer loyalty and disruptive-enabling technologies as key differentiation drivers. In general, we do not like markets that are late to develop or require significant expenditure to educate the consumer to buy products or services that they don't know they need. Instead, we look for companies who have an established track record of investing across the services sector.
The Consumer and Business Services sector includes companies that manufacture and sell products and/or provide services to individuals, businesses, and/or government bodies. Companies in this group are not developers of information or healthcare technologies, but rather producers of products for the consumer household markets and service-related industries.
These include security systems, training and process outsourcing, consultancy, personal care products, electronic publishing and information, marketing and business services and electronic games. And, transportation and travel services, sports and leisure – all market segments instructively linked together.
