Botanic Amenities Strategy Sprint

"We had a big market opportunity and great, disruptive solutions, but we're finding ourselves stuck and not sure which ‘doors to knock on’ next. We believe that having a clear purpose and defined vision is crucial to hacking growth. LOUDX really provided us a gift by opening our eyes to help prepare us for the next stage of our journey."

-Grant Mathis, COO Botanic Amenities

The client

The Company:

• Botanic Amenities provides eco-friendly, sustainable and degradable amenities products to hotels, restaurants, convention centers and stadiums (and their customers). 
• Their products range from straws, cutlery and serveware, to laundry bags, to-go containers and other single-use offerings, all without plastics and other chemicals that are harmful to the environment. 

Our Tool:

• The Strategy Sprint, in October 2021
• Conducted over 2.5 days, in Chicago 

The Strategy Sprint

The Strategy Sprint is an innovative, structured process for leadership teams to design a winning, practical strategy to decide on an actionable game plan that moves companies toward growth and innovation.

In this powerful workshop, which can range from one to four days in structure, your team aligns on a business purpose, critical challenges, and generates coordinated actions with a roadmap to overcome them.

Outcomes of the Strategy Sprint:

• A clear purpose defining a unique value proposition
• Assessment of critical strengths and challenges
• A set of clear guiding policies that lead to innovation
• A roadmap with actionable experiments to achieve strategy emergence

The Breakdown

Their Challenge:

• Needed alignment on the purpose and mission of the company, as well as their “brand voice” 
• BA team had some strategy concepts, but these concepts did not align cohesively with an overarching business strategy and needed further development
• BA team was not fully aligned on their go-to-market strategy and value proposition, across all stakeholders in the business development process: the manufacturers, the buyers (hotels/restaurants/convention centers) and the end-users (consumers). 
• Needed guidance on how to prepare the organization for growth, including capital raising, internal and external processes, finance and operations, legal etc.

Our Solution

• Alignment on a clear purpose, vision, and roadmap to implement a single overarching strategy at Botanic Amenities to grow and scale their business. 
• Development of three core strategic programs beneath the overarching business strategy, ranging from marketing and branding, to business development and operations. 
• Establish alignment on BA’s value proposition to each of the various stakeholders in the business development process: the manufacturers, the buyers and the end-users.
• Creating decision-making filters to eliminate diversions and force the BA team to focus on only the most crucial objectives for the business, at the various lifecycle stages of the company

“The beauty of the Strategy Sprint is being able to come up with bold ideas and solutions with an action plan to test. A culture of experimentation allows us to fail fast and fail forward. So the more challenging the solution we chose to tackle, the better the results would be.”

-Sasha Saberi, LoudX Partner + Design Strategist

“We’ve all been in meetings before where only the 1-2 loudest voices in the room are being heard. Our Strategy Sprint process ensures that every single stakeholder in the business is given a voice, enabling the organization to come up with the best possible strategy with real, genuine alignment amongst the team.”

-Blake Overlock, LoudX Director of Strategy & Growth Design

The Results

Within a few short weeks of the Strategy Sprint, Botanic Amenities secured the coveted “Preferred Supplier” status with a major hotel chain for all of their locations in North America, Central America and South America; BA is also their only preferred supplier in this industry. This alone presents a $36M+ annual revenue opportunity, for only one segment of Botanic Amenities’ business.

The Lessons Learned

Less is more.

Hone in your focus. Simplify your messaging, branding, and even the products you offer. A common mistake companies make is wanting to do or say too much, too early (or too much, always). Try to eliminate buzzwords as well as unnecessary information or clutter. Focus on the most critical and double down.

Use strategy as a decision-making filter. 

Focus and follow the energy of your team, double down on areas that have the greatest impact. Stop any unfocused activity, align resources and sell your strategy. Scope projects fully and anticipate resistance, then overcome it.

Never forget the user experience.

We are always solving a problem users are having and making their “jobs to be done” easier. Make sure to include user research and feedback when designing campaigns and solutions with what they actually want, not what we think they want.

Recommit to your purpose and strategy.

Iterate as needed. A culture of iteration and experimentation is crucial to growth. Use data insights and analytics to determine what is working, or not working, before going all in. Make changes or remove inefficiencies and costly initiatives that don’t push you forward.