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Company Overview:. New Balance Shoe, Inc. Was Founded In

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Company Overview: New Balance Shoe, Inc. was founded in 1906 in Boston, MA where it remains headquartered today. In 2015 the name was changed to New Balance Athletics Inc. and remains a subsidiary of New Balance, Inc. (Bloomberg, 2016). The company has a presence online as well as in retail stores within the U.S., and makes a variety of products from shoes to athletic wear for men, women, and children. New Balance is launching a new product during the upcoming holidays in 2016 that will expand their product base outside of their usual textile products to include wearable technology. New Balance is working with partners such as Intel and Android to help develop their first smartwatch which will be their first technology product (O 'Boyle, …show more content…

and this is what my project will reflect. They will also work closely with Android technology to be able to connect phones and New Balance clothing/equipment to the watch. This new product launch is new for the New Balance Company, but is not a new product being brought to the marketplace. This could be both advantageous and detrimental to the company. The advantage would include the ability to look at the successes and operations process of companies such as FitBit and Nike who have a similar product in the market. The challenge will be how to differentiate the product and gain market share that might already be taken from other companies. The company will be using the “American made” approach for this product launch with the company opening up their own U.S. manufacturing plants which will help promote the marketing as well as helping to boost the local economy by providing U.S. jobs. The ability to connect this smartwatch to other products, tracking steps on shoes, heart rate on athletic shirts, etc. will also provide a competitive advantage. Production Needs: Approximately four million of the shoes produced by New Balance are manufactured and assembled within the United States. This new product will also lend itself to this American made model as it will be manufactured within the U.S. Currently there are five New Balance facilities located in Massachusetts and Maine (New Balance, 2016). These will be the locations

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