An 12 page paper. Mervyn's was established in 1949, acquired by Target in 1978 and sold to an investment company in 2004. It is now a privately-held company. This paper begins with a brief history of this company, provides a description of the industry, and information about Mervyn's and its troubles. A SWOT is included as is Porter's 5 Forces industry analysis. The writer identifies some of the company's problems and offers strategic recommendations for the short-term future. Bibliography lists 12 sources.
Name of Research Paper File: MM12_PGmrvns.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
sells a myriad of brand-name apparel items, housewares, jewelry and other items (Biesada, 2006). It also offers items under private labels, such as Hillard & Hanson (Biesada, 2006). About half
of the stores are located in malls (Biesada, 2006), the rest are either located in community shopping centers or they are freestanding sites (Mervyns, 2006). The target market is working
mothers between 25 and 49 (Biesada, 2006). The first store was opened in 1949 in San Lorenzo, California by Mervin G. Morris; it was supposed to be Mervins but the
sign maker made a mistake and Morris simply kept the misspelling (Wikipedia, 2006). The store was acquired by Dayton Hudson Corporation in 1979, which subsequently became Target Corporation (Wikipedia, 2006).
Beginning in the mid-1990s, the store was rebranded as Mervyns California (Wikipedia, 2006). The intent was to identify the store with its West Coast demographic and heritage (Wikipedia, 2006). They
changed the name back when the new name did not result in any greater revenue (Wikipedia, 2006). In July 2004, Target Corp. sold Mervyns to "a group of investors including
private investment firm and turnaround specialist Sun Capital Partners Inc. of Boca Raton, Florida, Cerberus Capital Management of New York, and real estate investment company Lubert-Adler Management Inc. of Philadelphia"
(Wikipedia, 2006) for $1.2 billion (Yahoo! Finance, 2005). It is now a privately held company, which makes obtaining any significant information about their fiscal performance, operations, etc. extremely difficult to
do. However, both Sun Capital and Cerberus Capital specialize in keeping floundering companies alive (Simonetta, Sun, 2006; Simonetta, Cerberus, 2006). In September 2005, Mervyns president announced the company would "focus
exclusively on Western and Southwestern markets" (Wikipedia, 2006). That means stores in other geographic regions, like Oklahoma, Michigan, Texas, Louisiana and parts of other states will be closed around