Competitors of Procter & Gamble Unilever Unilever was founded in 1930 through the amalgamation of operations of British soap

maker Lever Brothers and Dutch Margarine producer Margarine Unie. The start of the 21st century marked the launch of a restructuring plan Path to Growth a strategy devised by the company to transform the business thereby leading to more acquisitions and formation of centers of excellence. The following were the planned targets of the new plan:a) The new plan aimed at annual sales growth of 5 % and op. margins of 15 % within 4 years. b) 1200 brands that generated only 9 percent of revenue as well as around 25000 jobs and a quarter of manufacturing plants were eliminated. c) Supply chain IT systems were standardized and improved to optimize the fully integrated network of mfg. plants and distribution facilities. d) Purchasing was further automated and became centralized to reduce costs To aid the new plan, Unilever unveiled its new organizational structure in April 2000. The salient features of the new structure adopted are as follows:a) Each regional organization was split into two divisions:1. Foods 2. Home and Personal care (HPC) b) Each division possessed its own Sales & Marketing(S&M) and regional innovation functions. c) Regional presidents managed the two divisions as separate entities. d) Each regional president served either a Foods or a HPC executive committee. e) Each executive committee was chaired by a divisional director. f) The R&D and supply-chain functions were then consolidated globally by product division. This allowed the individual Foods and HPC supply chains to develop platform mfg. and dist. solutions across regions. g) Large global technical centers focused on core technologies that were adapted in small regional innovation centers. Colgate-Palmolive Colgate-Palmolive (CP) had generated revenues worth $9.4 billion in 2000. Since 1990, revenues of the company had been growing at a rate of 5 %, while net profits soared at 13 % p.a. 75 % of the sales came from roughly 25 global brands, with Colgate toothpaste being a multi-billion dollar brand in its own right. CP enjoyed leadership and a huge global share in oral care. The Dentifrice brand had literally become the word for toothpaste in many languages. Colgate had about 40 % market share in the global dishwashing-liquid market and a considerable amount of share in the global high end pet nutrition market. Oral care,

personal care and pet nutrition were the major product areas of the company and had shown rapid progress and development over the years. Coming to the organizational structure of CP, the following can be noted:a) It managed its business through 4 regional subsidiaries. b) Each subsidiary had 2 product category divisions: oral/personal/household care/pet nutrition. c) It had a matrix reporting structure similar to P&Gs in which the GMs of regions were balanced by the heads of product category divisions. d) R&D was a purely corporate function. Kimberly-Clark Kimberly, Clark & Co. (K-C), founded in 1872 is the worlds largest tissue manufacturer. It made a business of about $14-billion which was entirely based on paper products. 55 % of the sales came from N.A., 15 % from Europe, and 30 % from other parts of the world. It had the highest operating margin among any paper company of nearly 18%. P&G Paper was 2nd at just over 12%. The 2 major global billion dollar brands were Kleenex and Huggies which had a huge market share in over 80 countries of the world. Huggies, in particular, was a very successful brand and had handsomely surpassed the creator of the product category i.e. Pampers in USA. It had averaged around 68 % growth in sales and double-digit growth in income (earnings) for the past 15 years. Organizational structure: In Europe, it shifted from a country-based sales force to a customer-based sales force. Each of its main customers (32 in number) was assigned a dedicated sales force. LOreal LOreal, the worlds largest cosmetics and Beauty Company has reported sales of around $12.8 billion in the 150 countries it had its reach. Sales were concentrated mainly in the global brands (15 in number). The LOreal brand had recorded global sales of over $4 billion whereas the worlds largest luxury brand, Lancme, had sales of about $2 billion. Sales had increased over the year largely because of acquisitions and rapid globalization of its local brands. The following are the salient features of the structure of the organization:a) Brands were slotted into one of the following divisions:1. Consumer (grocery, pharmacy, mass discounter) 2. Luxury (department-store counters, specialty retail, LOreal-owned retail stores) 3. Professional (salons), active cosmetics (dermatologists). b) Global brand teams were based on the brands base continent. These teams were in charge of developing the global brand key i.e. the essence of the brand. c) Regional brand teams negotiated with global brand teams to improve their local processes. d) Brands were managed as separate businesses to engender competition and maintain distinctive offerings.