第四輯? TEST 1

PART ONE

My name is Jack Lester and I'm here to talk about the company I originally founded in nineteen seventy-two, Hinde Instruments.

Today, the company, (with factories in Nevada and Texas and its headquarters in California), is one of the world's largest manufacturers of telescopes. Sales have grown at a rate of thirty-six per cent for the last ten years and in two thousand and two, reached one hundred and twenty-six million dollars. But this hasn't always been the case. In fact, in nineteen ninety-one, the threat of bankruptcy was hanging over the company.

If you say that something is the case, you mean that it is true or correct.

if something bad is hanging over you, you are worried or anxious about it.

I've always been an amateur astronomer and started building my own telescopes when I was ten. After working as an engineer at WAC, it seemed quite natural to start my own telescope company, Hinde Instruments.

To start with, the company imported telescopes and sold them by mail order, but by nineteen seventy-seven, the company was making its own telescopes. Almost overnight, we took a huge portion of the market, amateur astronomers being keen to buy our telescopes because of the features they offered. By 1983, sales reached two million dollars. In 1986, I sold the company for six point five million dollars to the Amtex Group, staying on as President.

From the start, I disagreed with the new owners, and things did not go well. Then the sky fell in (collapse). In February,1991, the bank called in the company's loans. There was no cash at the time. In fact, the company's balance sheet gave a net worth of minus 2.5 million dollars for 1991, the company having lost that much the previous year on sales of 11.5 million dollars. I made a personal loan to the company of 65 thousand dollars to stave off the bank for one week so I could start to negotiate with three senior managers at Hinde interested in buying the company. It worked, and Amtex agreed to sell us 100 per cent of the company's stock, along with all its liabilities, for one thousand dollars.

call in a loan/debt: to officially tell someone to pay back money you lent from

If you stave off something bad, or if you stave it off, you succeed in stopping it happening for a while.

As the key investor, I purchased 51 per cent of the company for 510 dollars.The four of us managed to put together 2 million dollars, and we decided this was to be used totally on product development. Amtex hadn't moved on any new products, so we had the luxury of engineering and of proof-of-concept waiting for us. We published a new catalogue of high-tech products and took out (取得) advertising in leading astronomy magazines.

Just twelve months after our purchase, we managed to get the company into the black（盈利）. For the first two years, we all took very modest salaries. But it was an exciting time, and progress was being made. We develop products the market wants to buy. We rely on our instincts and have frank discussions with dealers. We do this rather than run marketing studies, because we think they can be a waste of time. It sounds simple, and it works for us. And while the advanced telescopes are clearly the company's brand strength,
a major reason for our success with consumers is our ability to apply sophisticated technology to mass-market models. We offer a range of telescopes costing from eighty-nine dollars to 15 thousand dollars, but 50 per cent of sales are generated by telescopes sold for under 500 dollars.
In the future, I see Hinde creating more telescopes for amateur astronomers. But the company is also looking for ways to broaden into new markets. We believe that our core competencies are in demand (需求量大，受歡迎) and will achieve that breakthrough for us. For the last year, for example, the company has supplied optical components to HNT Networks in Seattle, a wireless-communications company. Thank you. If you have any…

PART TWO

1. I'm glad I did the course I did, and I would, taken as a whole, recommend it to others.
The prospectus（簡章，宣傳小冊）went on about the fact that the university had world-class computer and library facilities and so forth, but that's not what really attracted me so much as the big-name lecturers,
And I have to say, they were very good, though when I look back on it now, I realize that the people I learned most from were my fellow students. They came from all over the world, and I've really valued the insights they gave me into being on the receiving end of multinational marketing. It was those insights that I feel have been of real value since I came back into the workplace.

2. Doing the MBA has made me much more marketable, I think. My particular area of interest -- e-commerce management - was becoming very popular, but I wasn't likely to get a good job without the added value of the higher qualification.?

The reason for choosing this course is obvious; with my family commitments, I wouldn't have been able to do a masters if the college had been miles away, but I was pleasantly surprised when I started just how strong the course was on the legal side of business, which helped me in the work I now do in staff recruitment and support. And I think a good grounding in law is of great benefit to most people, at whatever level of management they find themselves.

3. In the first term of my MBA, I was a bit disappointed by the number of general lectures rather than smaller-scale seminars, even though I'd been warned in advance that this would be the case. I had a choice between a course specializing in law and one which offered lots of modules on Finance. I opted for the latter. It was really a matter of self-discipline -- I was always bad at it, so I thought I'd better do something about that. We spent far less time on personnel matters, but ironically, I've got a lot more out of those sessions.

I suppose what I'm saying is that the course has helped me to be more realistic about where my strengths and weaknesses lie. I seldom have anything to do with the financial side of things now.

4. I remember I was feeling rather under-challenged at that time -- a lowly admin officer (行政專員), and I was fascinated by all the opportunities opening up with internet business, you know, so I chose an MBA which was offering lots of innovative sessions in that area.

And I have to say, the course did me a great deal of good all round, I'd always been something of a loner, but since coming off the course, I've thrived in a more co-operative environment. I don't think I would ever have managed that without having done the course. I'm thinking of changing jobs again -- moving from purchasing into customer-service management, and I'm looking forward to another challenge.The MBA has given me the confidence to do that without worrying.

5. I decided against doing the MBA at the college down the road, because although they had an excellent reputation, they seemed to me to be too traditional for my particular needs. I plumped for 選中 a course at UCDA, even though it was such a long way away, because it had a good track record dealing with changes to the statute book. And I don't regret it: I think the fact that I did my thesis on this -- European Business Regulation -- helped me to get my current job.

It's significant, though, that I haven't actually had to apply much of my legal knowledge in the job. Instead, I've ended up working in product standardisation and monitoring -- which, of course, my MBA studies helped with, too.

PART THREE

I asked you to prepare the case study of Ralcona, the soft-drinks manufacturer. Let's work through the main issues together. Now, I assume you've looked at the background? Can you give me a summary?

Yeah, well, Ralcona are a UK company who had one very famous drink -- Jista -- which was selling well world-wide. But two years ago, when the new Chairman arrived, he decided to exploit that popularity to expand the product range. Ralcona had introduced jista into markets in Japan, Australia and several South-East Asian countries. But there's recently been a slide in sales, despite the fact that jista is still holding up reasonably well against some stiff competition from other multinationals. （resist or confront with resistance）

OK, stop there, because I want to fill you in on（提供最新消息）the discussions that took place in the planning of this new product range -- they were very interesting. Inevitably, the various interested parties in the company all had very different ideas, but they all advocated caution. So, for example, the finance department wanted to test the markets closer to home first, while the marketing team were worried any new drinks would dilute 稀釋 the image of the core brand and so were looking at new names. But across the board, the people at the top favoured launching each product separately at different times to get maximum impact for each product. So that's what happened. All right, go on.

Well, they then had to decide which market to aim for, Did they just replicate other drinks on the market and try to eat into those markets? 進軍，侵蝕 Should they focus solely on the youth market, which was rapidly expanding? Or should they be daring and go for an older, more sophisticated age group with more expensive products? Riskily, they plumped for the latter, Then, having decided where they were going, the R and D department began developing the products.

Right, and a key factor here was deciding on the all-important 首要的 design?of the packaging. Now, designers tend to have a track record of success - or not - so the safest option would have been to employ a team of consultants who specialized in this. But, driven by the focus on innovation from the new chairman, they trawled（fish with trawlers）the market for recent graduates, thinking their enthusiasm would make up for their lack of experience. They were also approached by designers from other companies, but thought they'd be too set in their ways（思想固化）, So the industry was waiting eagerly to see what Ralcona had to offer, but at the last minute, the company halted the launch for three months, Why was that?

An overworked marketing department had pulled out all the stops (竭盡全力，全力以赴) to get everything ready. And the retailers, who had been geared up for getting the products in the shops, took a pretty poor view of the decision. But Ralcona's chairman had heard, correctly, that their main rivals intended to attack the launch with an aggressive promotion,

so he intervened at the last minute. Eventually, the delayed launch went ahead, and the new products were brilliantly successful.

Yes, and hoping to exploit this still further, Ralcona did some research into why the products had struck such a chord 引起共鳴, expecting to find positive results for their advertising campaign or design, but they were taken aback 大吃一驚.?Why?

Well, they discovered that the drinks were being drunk as mixers with other products so much so that sales had almost reached the level of Jista, the core product. So Ralcona had targeted the market accurately, but had failed to see how wide the applications for the products were.?

And this taught Ralcona some valuable lessons that have now put them at the forefront of the industry.

Yes, it seems they have now established a good creative team who constantly come up with new ideas, and the marketing division has rethought its mission and now focuses on getting copious（豐富的）feedback from supermarkets, clubs and cafes to find out what consumers are looking for.
So other businesses, not just the drinks industry, have looked to Ralcona as a model and as a warning. What were your conclusions?
Their experiences prove what we already know - that successful companies must be prepared to go out on a limb（孤立無援的）, and finely targeted（準確定位的）markets can be more profitable than making products with more general appeal. But what it uniquely demonstrates is that, in any business, you should never assume that you know what's going on. The consumers have a lot to tell us, but they won't if they're not asked, and your products can live or die by getting the right information.