Case #2 Edward Marshall Boehm, Inc.
Mr. Boehm was a farmer and veterinarian that enjoyed making porcelain sculptures . What started off as a hobby soon led to a career and a business for himself and his wife. But this did not happen overnight or without overcoming a lot of barriers.
The first barrier that Mr. Boehm had was knowing what part of the market or what market for that matter he should enter into. He had to see what medium of art best fit his market and his artistic abilities. He found that people were interested in his porcelain animal figures. And in particular his birds.
The next barrier he had to overcome was how to developing his product. His products would be made of hard paste porcelain the best porcelain in the world. He did extensive research in development. Not much information existed on how to make it. So Boehm and some chemist friends worked out of his basement and developed a clay that was equal to the finest in the world.
Then Boehm’s business began to take off and he reached the problem of expansion. His wife quit her job to market his products full time. He then also had to design a product line. He designed a product line that hit several price points to reach multiple markets. He would team up with a distributor Minton China to get his product out into the market across the United states to 175 retail outlets.
Boehms work gained a lot of attention from sophisticated art collectors. He then focused on the problem of strategically planning and