Abstract

It was 1^st October 2017.Stirring her coffee in her beautiful Jaipur studio, Shreya Mathur, co-founder of ‘The Summer Craf’t’, an e-Commerce brand that manufactures and sells sustainable apparel, was in a quandry. The company, which had been started as a go-to destination for buyers of  eco-friendly, fair-trade products had, in a short span of two years, grown from 4 to 25 craftsmen, due to increasing demand from ethical customers in India, USA and Europe. However, producing world-class quality products in pace with the deadlines of its growing client base was becoming more and more difficult. Thoughts were brewing in Shreya’s mind: the most obvious solution, i.e., outsourcing some of the work to keep up with increasing customer demand for their completely handcrafted products, could well have dire consequences. What other alternatives did they have to resolve their growth and scalability issues?

Learning Objectives

• To understand growth and scalability issues in the start-up phase.
• To understand the possible growth strategies available for an organization.
• To understand the pros and cons of outsourcing production.