ClearVue

Center for Entrepreneurial Studies,
Babson College © 1996

ISBN 0-324-00163-0

Case Teaching Package
A case teaching package, written by Bill Bygrave, is available for this case. It includes strategies for case presentation, key concepts, solutions to the assignment questions in the case, and suggestions for the most effective ways to work this case into your course.

Length
This case is 12 pages in length and its case teaching package is 6 pages.

Abstract

ClearVue Products is a wonderful David versus Goliath story in the consumer products industry. It deals with a tiny company in Lawrence, Massachusetts—a run-down New England textile city—competing successfully with giant companies such as Proctor and Gamble. ClearVue's principal product is a glass cleaner that Lawrence Plate Glass had been manufacturing—primarily for its own internal use—for 40 years. When Brooks O'Kane, the son-in-law of the president of Lawrence Plate Glass joined the firm in 1989, annual revenue for external sales of ClearVue was $62,000; in 1995 it was $4 million.

The decision point in the case is an opportunity that has been offered to Brooks: Red Cross Nurse disinfectant, which has been around for more than 125 years. Annual revenue is about $200,000 and declining. The owner of RCN wants to retire and has offered to sell the product and trademark to Brooks. To decide whether or not to buy RCN, students have to understand the strategies and tactics that Brooks employed to make ClearVue so successful.

This case gives students an opportunity to examine a virtual corporation focused on what it does best, marketing and selling; it subcontracts everything else. It can be positioned late in a new ventures course, in a growing business course, or in a marketing course.

• Location of the company: Massachusetts
• Years spanned by the case: 1989 through 1995
• Industry segment: Cleaning product for domestic glass and auto glass; disinfectant
• Stage of the company: Growth
• Age of the entrepreneurs: 30s