In retrospect, we learned the most about what worked and did not work about our

marketing and branding strategies after rollover two and three. After rollover two, we learned

that, marketing-wise, increasing our investments in advertising and branding increases our

awareness index. We learned that it allows us to win and secure a significant amount of the

market share early on since we reached the exponential increases in brand awareness.

Additionally, we learned that by continuing to invest until 2025, we could count on our

awareness increasing by at least a couple hundredth percents - specifically by investing public

relations (PR) into road bikes and advertising into mountain & youth bikes. We also learned that

investing more into magazine media for road and mountain while spending in television media

for youth did best in multi-world just like in the single-world version.

We learned to keep our branding indexes the highest of our world by increasing to

$250K, $750K, and $1M to keep the index high. With consistent high brand advertising, we

learned that we could increase our prices as we had secured a large market share. In addition, we

learned that after investing $1M into overall advertising during one rollover, we could start

cutting back advertising spending since we had earned the ideal effects of investing 1M and

would not lose them if we divested. This combined with upping our prices for the mountain and

road bike would have increased our margins and profits and shareholder value as a result.

Another important thing we learned is we need to invest more in advertising and branding at the

beginning because our competitors would be doing the same because grasping market share was

of utmost importance.

Altogether, we learned that the lessons we learned from Mike’s Bikes could be applied in

the real world, like the toy industry. Amazon’s strategy for e-commerce with toys was much
better than Toys R Us’s because Amazon reinvested its profits into advertising while Toys R Us

could not do the same because of its large debt. That allowed Amazon’s online sales strategy to

be better than Toys R Us’s and keep the market share despite Toys R Us’s last efforts with deep

discounts and entire toy lines. Intense advertising is crucial for relevancy and market share.

A major concern for our team in determining the numerous decisions for each rollover

was predicting the decisions of competing firms, such as ABC and Bet On It. We learned to talk

through all the potential actions that each group could take and how it would dictate our course

of action. We then applied our thinking into plans for each rollover. Through this, we learned the

importance of making various plans of action as well as contingencies. This skill can translate

into the professional world as there is no guaranteed way to know what a competitor will do and

how it will affect the company. Preparing for best and worse case scenarios, and planning for

them, is essential in setting up a company for success.