System-In-The-Room Summit
Situation:
For decades the magazine industry has struggled with entrenched inefficiencies, including a 36% in-store sell-through that translated to 2.6B unsold magazines in 2006. As the distributor in between retailers and publishers, our client was feeling significant financial pressure with the rise of the internet and declining retail sales. This created the conditions to bring together – for the first time – all the senior executives from each of the biggest value chain companies to find ways to reduce the significant and unneeded cost and waste associated with 6 out of 10 printed magazines never being sold.
Our Role:
Blu Skye analyzed the environmental impacts of the entire magazine supply chain and developed a hypothesis of where value could be found by reducing waste and increasing in-store sell through by resetting the industry’s misaligned incentives. We then worked individually with all the leading companies in the value chain to better understand their readiness to change. Finally, we designed and ran a three-day multi-stakeholder ‘System in the Room’ summit which included representatives from each stage of the value chain focused on creating innovative solutions.
Results:
- By the end of the three-day session, the industry achieved levels of unprecedented cooperation and commitment to change.
- The innovation lab resulted in the launch of 6 pilot projects.
- Early phases have already achieved notable progress towards the year-end goal of 50% efficiency, while also increasing profitability.
- Tens of millions of dollars have been saved in this process.