Business report: tracking my investments

Loblaw.inc is a Canadian grocery store company. The grocery stores we can associate with this company are Loblaws, Provigo, Maxi, Maxi&Cie, The Real Canadian Superstore and many more. Loblaw provides a one-stop range of corporate stores and franchised stores that holds food and everyday household needs. There is also, for the customers, a chance

I started out with 70, 000.00 $ in bank and invested in Loblaw Company Limited by buying 50 shares of 35.00$ each. I began this investment on the 2th of December. I thought this was a good company to invest in because I work in one of the many franchised stores and saw how, in my store, things where going well financially.

I was wrong to think that because the moment I began my investment, I was already loosing my money. When I started, the change section in red and was at -3.62. However, I did non change companies, having a little bit of faith in this one that it would make me some money. From week to week, I saw some improvement in the change section. I kept going higher as I kept checking how where. It when from -2.46 to -1.11 and when I checked today, it was at 0.00. I kept checking throughout the day, and as I predicted at the very beginning, I have made some money out of this. At the moment, the companies change is written in green and is up to +0.22. I have made, in four weeks, 1,431.81 $.

In conclusion, I find that I have made a good investment and if I would continue, I would probably end up making more money since every week an improvement was present. However, I do not know for sure if the company will always improve.

I do recommend this company to potential investors because I did see an improvement in this short period of time. I do think that it will continue improving for at least a couple of months from now seeing that in only one month it has. I suggest not buying to many shares to see how things will go and if an improvement is shown, to purchase more.

Tableland summary

Tableland, a movie by Craig Noble, is a documentary about where food comes from. The camera crew visits different farms that show the viewers how they work. The movie is divided in five chapters. In the first chapter, namedd “Sustainability”, farmers talk about the satisfaction they get from growing and selling their own food. Also, they mention that they grow their food naturally because they claim that they do not need poison to grow good crops. In the next section, “Small Scale”, the farmers talk about the advantages of owning a small scale farm. For example, how small can be beautiful, economical and successful. They talk about how the population can’t count on big scale farms to be nourished correctly. When it comes to small scale farms, buyers know where their food comes from and how every product they buy is unique and chemical free. However, the famers do admit that their organic food is more expensive than regular chemical filled grocery store food. In addition, the third section is about how the quality of food is poor and getting poorer. This part of the movie, titled “Industrial”, talks about all the disadvantages of industrial food companies. They teach the viewers some facts about how industrial food companies make our food unhealthy and less expensive than it should be. Moreover, the farmers talk about the hidden costs in industrial food, for instance taxes, packaging, bad heath (cancer) and exploitation. Afterwards, the next chapter, named “Taste”, talks mainly about how organic food is more flavorful than industrial food. The hand labor farmers put into harvesting their own food makes it taste better. Accordingly, the farmers think that everyone needs to be educated to taste because they often have a tendency to buy industrial food. Finally, the movie ends with the last chapter named “Local” where the farmers try to promote their small scale farms by telling the viewers that supporting local farms is very important. They mention some advantages of selling food locally such as how they get a chance to know their customers and how the customers get to know them how they can stay in their homes to work and how they are proud of what they do. Nevertheless, famers must go trough a cycle, meaning that from season to season they do not always get the same products. Hence, in the end, people want to know where their food comes from.

By Susan Dumouchel

Report writting

To: Olivier Pelletier
Office Manager
From: Susan Dumouchel
Assistant Manager
Ref: CF/AB
Date: October 24th, 2008
REPORT ON “THE COMPANY"S OFFICE MEETING.


1.0 INTRODUCTION
Since you missed the last office meeting which was held on Monday October 20, I wanted to keep you up to date by writing a short report. Many subjects were brought up, but one of them was especially important. “The Company” wants to cut 6,000 jobs over the next five months. As we discussed, many points supported this precised subject. “The Company” is losing a lot of money; therefore we have no choice but to cut our staff. Every reason for the layoffs revolves around this serious money problem.

2.0 REASONS
2.1 Competition
As you know, we have lost many customers because of “The Bad Company”. They sell almost the same merchandise as us, but at lower cost. Therefore, we need to layoff some of our less important workers because we won’t have to pay as many salaries and since we are doing this over the next 5 months we will be losing less money. Also, the head office insisted on the fact that we will have to cut some of the remaining employees’ hours.

2.2 Improving our image
Once again, because we are losing so many customers, we either need to attract a new range of clients or recuperate the ones we have lost by proving to them that our company has better quality products than our competition. “The Bad Company” has a better image than us, regardless of their poor quality products. We would need to hire a new temporary staff that will be willing to change our image completely. Since we will be hiring new employees, we will replace a small part of the old staff (3 to 5 percent).

2.3 Publicity
Our company will need to start new publicity campaign. Presently, “The Company” dosen’t have a wide publicity range. Only a few billboards are available, but we talked about going even deeper into the publicity world,.TV commercials and newspaper ads would be a nice start.

2.4 Lowering our prices
We also discussed lowering our prices, but only temporarily. We will start some sort of winter sale since the frosty season is only a couple of months away. This is one of the things we could incorporate in our ads since it is a good way to attract customers.


3.0 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
As you may have noticed, the main reason why we need to cut approximately eleven percent of workers is because “The Company” does not make enough money thus obligating us to lay off our less important workers. As we cut most of our workers, we will try to improve our sales and make more money buy starting a new publicity campaign and improving our image. We have to watch out for our competition, because they are presently higher in the business market. Finally, by lowering our prices, we might be able to win back some customers and attract new ones. Hopefully we will be able to make more money thanks to this important decision.

3.1 Another meeting will be held on Monday October 27 at 1 o’clock. We will continue discussing the subject and will finalize our decision.

Summary of "Dirty Buisness, Bright Ideas"

SOL Cleaning Service is a company like no other. Every employee enjoys their job, probably because of the upbeat environment they work in and the bright colors on every wall. Creator Liisa Joronen built her company out of her family's 150-year-old industrial empire.

The only rule the company takes to heart is to not follow corporate rule, for example, there are neither titles nor secretaries. However, the company logo, a yellow happy face, must be found on everything. To be part of SOL staff, people must go thought a training program that ends with a final exam. Afterwards, the new employees continue to study time management, budgeting and people skills. SOL’s does not focus on responsibility and authority. The cleaning team works as they want, but the supervisors are the ones who take care of hiring their team, budgeting and negotiating with the clients. Since SOL employees don’t focus on rules, they give more attention to measuring performances. The clients rate the teams based on the benchmarks the employees make up and at the end of month SOL rates each team thanks to the results.

There are a few offices for the supervisors, but they hardly use them. SOL equips every one of them with a company cell-phone and a laptop so they can work from where ever they want. Furthermore, every document, such as performance reports and upcoming events, is posted on the company’s Intranet. SOL is a very successful company and is improving everyday.

E-mail

To: Mario Cumino
From: Susan Dumouchel

Subject: Possible solutions to save “Caferoma” coffee

Dear Mr. Comino,

I am very happy that you enjoyed my presentation from last Monday’s meeting about the several problems concerning the sales of Caferoma’s rich Italian-style coffee. As my partner and I mentioned, the sales have declined by almost 30% thanks to brand loyalty, the price, the ‘copycat’ products and the brand image. We have come up with possible solutions that we will present to you at the next meeting.

At the next meeting, we will present six main ideas to solve Caferoma’s problems: changing Caferoma’s image to appeal to a different market segment, reducing the price by about 25%, developing a new advertising campaign to relaunch the brand, selling Caferoma under different brand names at lower prices, allowing supermarkets to see our coffee under their own brand name, bringing out new products such as instant coffee and stretching the brand using coffee machines.

I look forward to the meeting, hopefully our ideas will bring a change to the company.

Sincerely,
Susan Dumouchel

What to write about...

I don’t know what to write about. This problem happens to me every time a teacher gives an open “write what you want” essay type work. I never know what to write about! I am certain that this problem does not happen to uniquely me, but to every student on the planet as well Eventually, I get an idea about what to write about and it turns out to be pretty interesting, but right now, the idea has not come to me, thus, I will continue not knowing what to write about. Actually, instead of sitting here not typing anything, I will write a little about my weekend. Well first of all I got sick! Just when it’s starting to be nice outside I get a cold. The worst part about the weekend was that I was so tired! The first week of school was pretty hard to get adjusted to. Waking up every day at six o’clock to get to the eight o’clock class in time and then get to Saturday and I have to wake up early once again to go to work. The thing is, I got this insane cold and was going to a supper at my boyfriend’s dad’s house on Saturday night. Even though I was falling asleep and my through was starting to act up, I drank a big coffee, sucked it up and went to the party anyways. We left somewhat early, around eleven o’clock, and once I got home, I could not sleep! My boyfriend got me some cough syrup and after a few hours I finally fell asleep. When I woke up on Sunday morning I felt really bad from the lack of sleep, but I had to go to work anyways (after stocking up on cough drops and “Advil” of course). After that long shift, I went to spend some time with a couple of friends whom I saw again on Monday enjoying the nice sunny day fishing. To end the long weekend, my boyfriend and I went out for supper and watched a movie back at his place. I spent a very loaded weekend and it’s a good thing I did. If I hadn’t, I still would not known what to write about!