Shepherds Purse Cheeses is a niche food producer that was set up as a classic diversification strategy by a Yorkshire farm and it has clearly been a success, with the product range of cheese being expanded.
The owners face a challenge though. The business has become quite reliant on sales of cheese to the major supermarket retailers and is tempted to expand into the (potentially) more lucrative US market.
This poses significant logistical issues for a product with a relatively short shelf-life. Should they go ahead? The business owners explain the potential opportunity and difficulties, before getting some interesting advice from the business advisers reading the case. Excellent evaluative comments that will help you guys when looking at decisions Morissons has to make....
I decided to look into this company and founf not only does it have a blog!!!, but also a facebook page....classic example of trying to reach out to new markets and consumers!
http://shepherdspurse.co.uk/blog/
Interesting article...or they could just use product development...? Easy and simple. Perhaps sell leather from the livestock part of the farm, as well as cheese (leather is not perishable). This would, of course, involve converting some of their farm to this use, as all of the farm is arable. Lots of tricky decisions to make, although, I'm sure that they'd agree that some decisions are easier than others. Definitely worth an add on FB.
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