Strategic tools for the practising manager

KIT

World silk production is estimated to be 95,000 metric tonnes (MT). The world market for silk and silk products has grown by a mere 4 per cent in the past few years.

China and India together produce more than 80 per cent of the world's raw silk.

Although India is the second-largest producer of silk in the world after China, it accounts for just 5 per cent of the global silk market "" the bulk of Indian silk thread and silk cloth is consumed domestically.

The sericulture industry is land-based as silkworm rearing involves over 700,000 farm families and is concentrated in the three southern states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

The US (3 per cent) and the EU (2 per cent) are the largest markets for silk outside Asia, but with minuscule growth rates.

US imports of silk bed linen have almost doubled in the past two years, India commands a 40 per cent market share in the US silk bed linen market.

Over 90 per cent of the silk produced in India is multi-voltine in nature, while in the US and EU markets, the demand is mainly for bivoltine silk.

Of the 300,000 looms in the Indian silk weaving sector, only 10 per cent are powerloom; the rest are in the handloom sector.

NUGGETS
Selections from management journals

Do organisations with strategically focused, broadly responsible chief marketing officers produce better results than their traditionalist peers?

An ongoing study by Booz Allen Hamilton demonstrates that growth in revenue and profitability is strongest among those companies that elevate marketing's role to the strategic level. Interviews with some of the most renowned CMOs in the world "" from Procter & Gamble, Mercedes-Benz, Diageo, PepsiCo, NBC, Google, Yahoo, and more "" show how marketing is changing faster than many companies realise.

In the course of conversations, there emerged six themes that the best CMOs follow: put the consumer at the heart of marketing; make marketing accountable; embrace the challenges of new media; recognise the new organisational imperative; live a new agency paradigm, and remain adaptable.

The article discusses how these CMOs act on each and all of the six basics effectively, both to focus their work and to communicate the marketing department's potential to the entire organisation.

The new complete marketer
By Gregor Harter, Edward Landry and Andrew Tipping
strategy+business,
Autumn 2007
Read the article at www.strategy-business.com