VERONA GROUP

Question 1:
What is Verona Group’s mission? Briefly outline the strategies it employs? What are the key
value propositions highlighted of the fashion line? Elaborate.

Verona Group’s mission is “to provide its clients with both innovative designs and world-class
customer service.” They want to come up with new ideas for designs as well as prioritize
their customer’s experience with their brand. They saw these two things as equally as
important.Smith believed that trends in fashion are temporary and they come just as fast as
they go, but inthis business, true success is built on the long-term relationships you build with
your customers and your retailers. By creating strong relationships, Smith made sure that her
product had floor space and sales that it needed to thrive. Along with those, it also ensured
that her product had marketing support including print media advertising, mailings, and email
campaigns.

Question 2:
Anna George works as a salesperson at Verona Group, a company that designs and
wholesales high-end women's apparel. She had spent nearly 20 years in sales with another
fashion label and was well regarded in the industry. Verona Group hired her to bolster its
small but growing presence in the western United States. In her first two years with the
company, however, George has missed her sales targets and received mixed scores from
customers in Verona Group's annual customer service survey. When Emilio Chao, the head
of Verona's sales force, looks at George's performance review and discusses George's
situation with Catherine Edwards, Verona Group's head of human resources, he wonders
whether the company should give George additional support that would help her be more
successful Or is George not a good fit for the company.

Question 3:

Their job was to visit department stores and specialty stores and sell the Verona  Group
collections and to provide those customers with support, such as training or marketing 
materials, to help them sell the product both in stores and online. They also received a
marketing  budget that they could use to support their customers’ sales efforts. The size of
this budget was  calculated as a percentage of their annual sales goal. This percentage was
standard across the firm. 
Because Verona Group did not sell directly to consumers, it viewed any end-user information
that  it could glean from retailers as extremely valuable. Salespersons were considered the
eyes and ears of  the company. They were expected to share all feedback, through JULIET,
on a timely basis. Design,  merchandising, and marketing personnel were expected to listen to
their feedback and to act on it.  Smith explained, “The old way of making clothes, in which
designers operated in an ivory tower and  created styles without regard to what was going on
in the marketplace, no longer flies. The company viewed its brand as the sales team’s best
asset. Salespersons coordinated  marketing activities with partners and relied on employees
across the firm to assist clients. They had  little flexibility in customizing prices and contract
terms, which were set mainly at headquarters. 

Question 4

Much of George’s negative feedback from customers was related to  dissatisfaction
with the product and Verona Group’s marketing materials.. One large customer
wrote, “Anna is a regular  presence in our store. She listens, and she understands our
customer. However, she doesn’t translate  this knowledge into actions. For example,
the marketing pages she put together to accompany our big  annual sale featured
designs that did not work for our market. Our biggest Verona seller of the  season—
the pink ‘Paula’ dress—wasn’t even included in these pages.” In her first two years
with the company, however, George has missed her sales targets and received mixed
scores from customers in Verona Group's annual customer service survey.

Question 5