Bodybuilding Made Easy

Once the interviewee has clarified terms and the objective of the case and explained their structure you can share with them Diagram 1 assuming their structure is not the same as outlined in Diagram 1 to help the interviewee start off correctly. 

If the interviewee asks for a financial goal or any other more quantified client objective you can refer to the information below where the constraints on the client are listed under “Company”. There is no financial objective to be reached, any positive profit is sufficient.

As this might be an industry unfamiliar to the interviewee the following information can be shared with the interviewee verbally as the interviewee draws out the 3C&P (Company, Customer, Competitor, Product) framework (you should read this information carefully beforehand to familiarize yourself with the available information on this industry).

Information to be revealed to the interviewee upon request structured in the 3C&P framework for your convenience:

Company:

1) The client only has 50,000€ remaining in their bank account. This money must not be spent completely. At the end of any month, the balance on that account must be larger than 2,000€ otherwise your client can be considered bankrupt. You have the remaining 48,000€ available to spend and you need to ensure that monthly revenue exceeds monthly costs before the 48,000€ run out.

2) The client has to pay 10,000€ each month as loan payments.

3) The fitness model has a YouTube channel. The channel is mainly about training programs, the correct execution of strength-building exercises, and nutritional advice to maximize muscle gain while at the same time losing as much fat as possible.

He has a huge following of teenagers and young adults which happens to be the target demographic that consumes the largest amount of protein supplements amongst all other demographics.

The fitness model is one of the 3 big YouTubers on the topic of nutrition and fitness programs and is known by roughly 33% of all people within that target demographic of teenagers and young adults. He is especially well known for his unbiased supplement reviews and his general honesty and trustworthiness.

4) The chemist has developed new and healthy artificial flavors as well as a new amino acid compound that happens to be 3 times as efficient as the usual amino acids found in protein products of the competition (Let us just assume such a substance could exist). He owns patents on all of these. For more details look at the information available on “Product” below.

5) The client has received an offer from one of the biggest YouTube-specific advertisement agencies. This agency is a specialist when it comes to helping YouTube-personalities start marketing products to their audience.

They suggested that they could help our client gain a 20% market share leveraging the fact that the fitness model is already well known by 33% of the entire customer base. This 20% share will be evenly distributed across all products within the protein supplement industry. You will later see that there are 3 distinct product lines sold within this industry. The advertising campaign will allow the brothers to capture 20% market share for each of the 3 product lines.

For this service, the agency will charge our client 10,000€ a month as a fixed rate. This deal would last for 2 years and there is no way to exit the contract early.

You may assume that without this deal no market share can be gained against the competition and that if our client agrees to the terms of the agency that a 20% market share can be achieved instantaneously to make calculations easier.

You may also assume that the advertising campaign will allow the client to capture 20% of all customers regardless of what distribution channel will be used. So, 20% of all potential customers for a given distribution channel will be captured by the campaign.

6) The client has looked at 2 possible distribution channels:

A) An online shop: The website for this will cost 5,000€ as a one-off fee. 50% of all customers globally prefer to buy their supplements online. The online shop will be accessible globally and we can ignore shipment costs when sending our products abroad (You may assume that the brothers are actually children of Jeff Bezos the CEO of Amazon).

B) A local shop in Germany: The shop could be bought for 500,000€ as a one-off fee or the client could rent and operate a shop for 9,000€ a month. 50% of all customers globally prefer to go to their local shops and buy their supplements in person. Such local shops attract customers within a 10km radius around the shop.

Product:

1) In general, the daily dose of protein necessary to achieve maximum muscle growth is 40g (g stands for grams) per day. This is true for all products on the market except for one product that our client can produce.

2) there are 4 products available that the client’s factory can produce being protein bars (like a Snickers or Mars-Bar), protein cereal (Literal cornflakes cereal with protein powder within the flakes) and 2 types of protein powder (powder is dissolved in water to create a protein drink). One powder is very similar to the powder the competition produces. The other powder is called MX3 which is a new amino acid compound that is 3 times as “concentrated” as the normal protein powder on the market. This means 13.33g of MX3 are equivalent to a single daily dose of protein instead of the 40g you would need with powder that the competition produces.

3) All our client’s products taste better than the products of our competition. This is because our client is the only one able to produce the artificial flavors that differentiate our client’s products from the rest.

4) The MX3 is in a 1,200g box because the industry standard for powder is a 1,200g box size which is 30 days’ worth of 40g portions. The same size has been chosen for MX3 just to keep the sizes that customers are used to already.

5) The factory of your client contains 4 separate machines. One for each product line so all products have to be produced in order to not lose efficiency. The question is just how much should be produced for each product.

6) Substitute products to protein supplements are meat and dairy products. They tend to have a much higher fat content though which is why protein supplements are preferred by customers.

Customer:

1) Customers can be segmented by product line:

20% buy bars.

70% buy powder.

10% buy cereal.

2) Customers do not change their preferences so for example, those that eat protein bars will not use powder or cereal.

3) The overall market is growing at 1% and that is uniform growth across all 3 segments.

4) Almost all customers use protein supplements daily so you may assume that all customers consume one dose of protein per day with supplements every day.

5) The fitness model has sent MX3 to about 10,000 fans and has then done a survey to determine how many people would prefer to buy MX3 instead of normal powder.

The results of that survey were that 70% were amazed by MX3 and would never buy anything else once it becomes available. 30% claimed they would never buy MX3 because it is simply too expensive.

The reason why the 30% think that MX3 is too expensive seems to be that they kept using their 40g measuring spoons that they are used to using when consuming normal protein powder instead of the 13.33g spoon that is included in the packaging of the MX3 product. Thus they consume an entire box of MX3 in a single month instead of the 3 month period it is meant for.

6) Customers determine which product they buy based on the taste of the product and based on any loyalty bonus (discounts) they can expect if they continue to purchase from the same supplier.

7) Whenever a customer buys a product the customer will buy a month's worth of product. For bars, this means a box of 30 bars, for cereal a box with 30 portions in it, and for powder a single 1,200g box. They buy once a month, every month.

Competition:

1) There are 4 big competitors on the market each holding about 25% market share.

2) No competitor is able to create a product like our MX3 and MX3 is the cheapest product on the market on a per gram basis.

3) No competitor is able to improve the taste of their products to match the taste of our client’s products. This is because artificial flavors take a long time to be approved for consumption and the artificial flavors used by your client are patented.

4) Competitors all employ loyalty schemes to hold on to any customers they get. New customers have to pay very high fees for their first product and get a loyalty card. If the same customer returns the month after to buy the same product again then lower prices will be available for the product. The more you buy from any of the competitors the cheaper the products get. (The prices your client has chosen for each product are based on the initial prices a customer would have to pay when buying a new product from a new supplier. Once your client has built a customer base discounting prices to hold on to those customers is something the brothers will have to do to match the competition).

Once the interviewee understands that the products of the client are a great fit for the market the interviewee should switch gears and determine the best product mix (to be able to calculate how much the client profits on a per customer basis) as well as the distribution channel that maximizes the number of customers our client can serve. Some interviewees might determine that only the highest margin product should be introduced and the remaining products should not be sold. You should tell the interviewee in that case that this is a bad hypothesis as customers of our client have a fixed preference so if you sell for example only powder you will lose all bar and cereal customers you might have had otherwise. Also, the factory of your client has already been build to create all 4 products so not producing all 4 will reduce efficiency and would be a wasted investment.

To determine the right product mix we need to calculate the total demand for all products our client has to offer. We know we can capture 20% of the total market through our advertising campaign and that the 20% will be uniformly distributed across the product lines giving us 20% of the total market share in each of the 3 product lines. This means that we should have the same output proportions as the market demands so:

20% bars,

10% cereal,

70% powder.

However, as we know from our powder-customer survey that 70% of those customers will buy MX3 and 30% will buy our normal powder we can calculate that we should produce:

MX3% = 70% (powder market) * 70% (interested in MX3) = 49%

Normal powder% = 70% (powder market) * 30% (not interested in MX3) = 21%

So our client should produce:

20% bars,

49% MX3,

21% normal powder,

10% cereal.

Once the ideal product mix has been found ask the interviewee to determine the average profit our client will make when selling protein to a single randomly selected customer. Once we know the profit per customer we can calculate how many customers we need to cover our costs and then see which distribution channel is better at covering those costs.

Now that we know how much we can expect to earn on average on a single customer it is time to look at both distribution channels to determine which one will be able to reach more customers and if any of the 2 channels will be able to reach enough customers to cover the overhead costs: 

• advertising campaign (10,000€ a month),
• loan repayments (10,000€ a month) and
• distribution channel-specific costs.

There are 2 ways to go about this:

A good interviewee will attempt to guesstimate how many customers are within a 10km radius of a local shop and how many customers can be reached globally via the online shop and then once a customer number has been guesstimated it can be multiplied by the average profits per customer (34.47€) to determine if total profits from product sales are larger than overhead costs.

A very good interviewee will instead first calculate the total overhead cost for each distribution channel and then divide that by the average profits per customer (34.47€) to calculate how many customers must be reached to at least cover total monthly overhead costs. This is more efficient as the interviewee will quickly realize that the number of customers necessary to cover total overhead is very low when using the online store distribution channel. This makes the guesstimation of the exact number of customers and the total profits before overheads irrelevant to perform.

The client should hire the advertising agency and enter the protein market with a product mix of 20% bars, 10% cereal, 49% MX3 and 21% normal powder. The best distribution channel to use would be an online shop. There are 3 reasons why this is the right way to proceed:

1) The products of our client are the best tasting on the market due to patented flavorings. MX3 is the cheapest powder on the market (ignoring loyalty discounts and assuming only 13.33g per day are being consumed). These unique product features will give our client an edge in this market and attract customers to their brand.

2) The advertising campaign will allow the client to gain 20% market share instantaneously so demand is large and predictable in this industry right from the start. The suggested product mix is based on the natural segmentation of the customers and will exactly meet demand without over- or underproducing any of the products available.

3) The online distribution channel should be used as only about 581 customers are needed to break even and due to the global reach of the online shop, the fact that 50% of all customers globally buy their protein online and that we can transport our products globally at negligible transportation costs means that the online store gives our client access to the maximum amount of potential customers while also being the cheapest distribution channel available.

To increase certainty in this recommendation or advise on a more specific recommendation we could:

1) Do a more thorough analysis of the planned advertising campaign. Is a 20% market share achievable? If yes, then how long will it take to actually reach 20%? We assumed that 20% will be achieved by day one but how will the market share actually look like as a function of time between day one and the day we finally reach 20%? What will the graph of that function look like and what does that mean for the breakeven analysis of our client? Are 581 customers in the first month really achievable under more realistic conditions or could the brothers end up bankrupt?

2) Could the client leverage the popularity of the fitness model by selling products directly to fans instead of just opening an online store and hiring an advertising agency for marketing purposes? How large is the fan base of the fitness model? What proportion of fans would be interested in buying products monthly? Are those more than 581 already?