Charm City Run Swot Analysis

An Opportunity for Charm City Run:

Charm City Run began as a local running equipment store, started by a couple from Texas, the Levinsons, who got the idea from a business ran in their home state (“About Us”, n.d). Although Charm City Run started off small, the company has had many opportunities to expand and grow. Charm City Run’s owners decided to stay located in Maryland, and it remains a company characterized by its extensive community involvement and dedication to customers all over the state. According to Brian Nasuta (2014), a partial owner and long-time employee, Charm City Run grew from simple retail locations, to sponsoring local races, and finally implemented training programs for a variety of running races. Since Charm City Run

The decision to exploit most opportunities is risky, but with Charm City Run’s unique strategic resources, that risk can be reduced. Before the Levinson’s founded Charm City Run, they did not live in the Baltimore area, but instead visited it occasionally to run. They were given the idea of Charm City Run from a company in their home state, Texas, called Run-Tex (“About Us”, n.d). The owners of Charm City Run were able to take an idea from their home state, and transform it into a Baltimore-based company. A firm resource is defined as “a firm’s capabilities that are valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and costly to substitute” (Dess et al., 2010, p.95). The Levinson’s ability to transform a company that originated in Texas into a Baltimore-based company is an example of a firm

If the company-feel and operations inherent to Run-Tex were able to evolve into Charm City Run, then Charm City Run could potentially enter new cities based on this principle. Not only do the Levinsons have the rare and valuable ability to start a business in a place where the culture is relatively unknown to them, but they also have created path dependency, which is defined as a “characteristic of a resource that is developed or accumulated through a unique series of events” (Dess et al., 2010, p.98). If other people wanted to open up a store such as Charm City Run, they would not have the buyer power that Charm City Run has accumulated over the years. The manufacturers of top-selling brands of running shoes are less likely to allow stores with mediocre reputations or little experience to retail their shoes (Nasuta, 2014). If the Levinsons were to expand Charm City Run into different states, they would already have their established supplier connections from their previous encounters with manufacturers of running