Winter 2018

Moving in the Right Direction
HorizonProduceTransport.com
HorizonNEWS
This Newsletter is Published by Horizon Transportation Services, Inc - Winter 2018 #32
We Wish You
a Happy and
Healthy 2019
Four Types
of Pricing
Strategies
Setting prices for your
products or services
doesn’t simply.........pg3
A Year-Round
Fresh Fruit
Program
Provider
In the last two years
Horizon has been...........pg4
A very common
mistake is to
assume that
because you
are offering a
service with
higher quality,
it must be
more expensive
to the client.
That is not
true—quite the
opposite
Horizon is finishing
2018 as a much
better organization
than when it started
the year. Everyone
in the company has
accomplished a lot
and covered a lot of
terrain in our task to
become better in fresh
produce management
united under the
concept of quality.
Now, about four years
into the task, our team
is also aware that the
endeavor to reach
excellence serving our
clients has put us on a
long road with many
obstacles and that the
time frame to reach
our goal is around ten years.
Change is something that does not comes easily
for anyone. And we at Horizon have worked hard
this whole year to change our way of doing things
for the better. This is what we have focused on:
Team Alignment – Aligning Horizon suppliers
and the Horizon team to our clients’ needs is an
important objective. Although it sounds easy,
we are finding that it is more challenging than it
seemed at first. We have certainly evolved, but we
need to do more. Our leaders have concluded that
for us to reach the alignment we need to achieve
excellence, Horizon needs to continue doing what
it has been doing and expand the concept to all of
our suppliers, including educating our suppliers on
the process of quality management.
Horizon 2019 Plan:
Lower Cost for You
Risk Management –
A very common mistake
is to assume that
because you are offering
a service with higher
quality, it must be more
expensive to the client.
That is not true—quite
the opposite—and we
have been proving it.
The really big expense
to the clients and to
everyone involved in the
process is not the cost of
a load or the cost of the
transportation, but the
cost when something goes
wrong. A simple mistake
while transporting the
product can cost $50,000
to $100.000.
While working on developing our processes, we
have concluded that our core contribution to
our clients is that we manage the supply of fresh
produce to them and in the end reduce the risk in
doing so. The risk in buying produce and delivering
it across the country is so high and the margins
so low that we are perfecting our processes under
this concept—not only internally, but also for our
clients and suppliers.
Our top clients consider Horizon as an outsourcing
company that helps them manage their produce
supply with reduced risk in the final outcome.
Although we are not the cheapest supplier in the
market, we have shown our clients that we are
their best option because of our reliability, our
commitment to clients’ needs, and our obsession
in eliminating risk, which in the end translates into
high benefits and reduced cost to our clients.

Moving in the Right Direction
HorizonNEWS
If the
organization
has a flawed
design, it
simply won’t
perform well
The 3 Elements
of Organizational
Structure & Design.
If I were to ask you a random and seemingly
strange question, “Why does a rocket behave
the way it does and how is it different from a
parachute that behaves the way it does?” You’d
probably say something like, “Well, duh, they’re
designed differently. One is designed to go fast
and far and the other is
designed to cause drag and
slow an object in motion.
Because they’re designed
differently, they behave
differently.” And you’d be
correct. How something is
designed controls how it
behaves. (If you doubt this,
just try attaching an engine
directly to a parachute and
see what happens).
But if I were to ask you
a similar question about
your business, “Why does
your business behave
the way it does and how
can you make it behave
differently?” would you
answer “design?” Very
few people — even
management experts —
would. But the fact is
that how your organization
is designed determines
how it performs. If you want to improve
organizational performance, you’ll need to change
the organizational design. And the heart of
organizational design is its structure.
There’s a saying in architecture and design that
“form follows function.” Put another way, the
design of something should support its purpose.
For example, take a minute and observe the
environment you’re sitting in (the room, building,
vehicle, etc.) as well as the objects in it (the
computer, phone, chair, books, coffee mug, and
so on). Notice how everything serves a particular
purpose. The purpose of a chair is to support a
sitting human being, which is why it’s designed the
way it is. Great design means that something is
structured in such a way that it allows it to serve
its purpose very well. All of its parts are of the
right type and placed exactly where they should
be for their intended purpose. Poor design is just
the opposite. Like a chair with an uncomfortable
seat or an oddly measured leg, a poorly designed
object just doesn’t perform like you want it to.
Even though your organization is a complex
adaptive system and not static object, the same
principles hold true. If the organization has a
flawed design, it simply won’t perform well. It
must be structured (or restructured) to create
an design that supports its function or business
strategy. Just like a chair, all of its parts or
functions must be of the
right type and placed in the
right location so that the
entire system works well
together. What actually gives
an organization its “shape”
and controls how it performs
are three things:
1- The functions it
performs.
2- The location of each
function.
3- The authority of each
function within its domain.
The functions an
organization performs are
the core areas or activities
it must engage in to
accomplish its strategy (e.g.
sales, customer service,
marketing, accounting,
finance, operations, CEO,
admin, HR, legal, PR, R&D, engineering, etc.).
The location of each function is where it is
placed in the organizational structure and how it
interacts with other functions. The authority of
a function refers to its ability to make decisions
within its domain and to perform its activities
without unnecessary encumbrance. A sound
organizational structure will make it unarguably
clear what each function (and ultimately each
person) is accountable for. In addition, the design
must both support the current business strategy
and allow the organization to adapt to changing
market conditions and customer needs over time.
Source: Lex Sisney, the creator of Organizational Physics
Examine
your pricing
objectives
to develop
a clear idea
of what
you want
your pricing
strategy to
achieve.
HorizonNEWS
Four Types of
Pricing Strategies
Setting prices for your products or services
doesn't simply come down to a simple
calculation. Prices can be practical tools for
making ends meet or they can be marketing
tactics for communicating something about
the quality of your offerings. To figure out the
best way to set prices, it's worthwhile to take a
step back and examine your pricing objectives
to develop a clear idea of what you want your
pricing strategy to achieve.
Profit-Oriented Pricing
In a sense, all pricing is
profit-oriented because,
even if you set prices
with other objectives
in mind, you still need
to earn a profit to stay
in business. However,
profit-oriented pricing
makes profit the top
priority when figuring
out the ideal price to
set. A profit-oriented
pricing strategy looks
for the sweet spot that
allows you to charge
as much as possible
for your offerings without charging so much
that you alienate potential customers and lose
money through missed sales. This type of
pricing objective can either aim to maximize
profit per unit relative to cost of goods sold
and other operating costs, or it can aim to
maximize overall profit by setting a price that
is competitive enough to increase the overall
number of units you sell.
Competitor-Based Pricing
Competitor-based pricing uses the price you
set to appeal to customers and define your
niche relative to your competitors. It doesn't
necessarily rely on setting a lower price than
other available options, although this strategy
will certainly make your products appeal to
customers who shop on the basis of price alone.
You can also use competitor-based pricing
effectively by setting a price that's in the same
ballpark as other products in the same niche, or
by choosing a higher price to send the message
that your product is superior and worth the
extra money.
Market Penetration
A market penetration pricing strategy is geared
towards getting a foothold in a competitive
market, usually by offering a low initial price.
If you start out by attracting customers on
the basis of price, you can get more people
to try your products, and then start building a
reputation and clientele that will allow you to
eventually charge more.
A market penetration
strategy can be risky
because customers don't
like growing accustomed
to a low price and then
being asked to pay more.
However, this approach
can be successful if your
products really do have
qualities other than price
that will make customers
want to buy them, such
as unique features or
unusually high quality.
Skimming
A skimming pricing strategy uses the opposite
logic from one based on market penetration.
Although market penetration uses low prices
to attract attention, skimming uses a reputation
that has already been built to charge high prices
from early adopters. If customers are passionate
about your products and willing to pay extra to
be the first to have them, you can charge initial
high prices when you first introduce a new
innovation or a new line, and then lower the
prices once you've already attracted the people
who are willing to pay more.
Source: Devra Gartenstein
HorizonNews is published by Horizon Transportation issued every quarter to improve communication in the Produce Industry.
Publisher: Thomas Leal Design: Business Spring Communications - www.b-spring.com, tel (559) 801 2090

A Year-Round Fresh Fruit
Program Provider
HorizonNEWS
In the last two years, Horizon has been gradually consolidating its long
plan vision of being a Fresh Fruit Program Supplier to the retail and
food service industry- mainly for Grapes, Citrus, Stone fruit and Berries.
Horizon has reached this objective by enforcing that everyone of their
partners and suppliers apply the concept of continuous improvement to
the process of fresh fruit management and logistics.
This process has resulted in the accomplishment of three main
achievements:
1 - The creation of a group of partners that are willing to
participate and evolve continuously within Horizon program and vision.
2 - The development of a team of managers trained and
focused on the client wants and needs.
3 - The implementation of food safety standards, and best
practices to everyone involved in our process: from farmers and
handlers to shippers and logistics.
Fresh Seedless Grapes for Schools
®
Horizon most successful program, so
far, has been Sweet Bunches - a fresh
portioned seedless grapes, designed
for schools around the country: a
snack for children with an average of
twelve berries each, that still carries the freshness of the farms. Sweet
Bunches success is due to a rigid quality control on food safety and
best practices that each one of Horizon’s partners must obey to be part
of such program.
Fresh Portioned Seedless Grapes
®
The school year has just begun, and food-service companies and
schools have realized the depth of Horizon program, and are asking
for Sweet Bunches for their students. Horizon has been doing its best
to fulfill their needs, though we are limited by the supplier’s capacity.
If you would like to learn more about Horizon Programs and find out
how you can benefit from our fresh fruit supply chain, call (559) 636
0429 or link to horizonproduce.com. Be part of this team where
everyone is united by a quality process—a process of getting
fresh fruit to your table all year-round.
A Fresh Fruit Supplier