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The Namaste case is a story of how Kellogg alumni couple Gary and Denise Gardner grow their Namaste branded hair care line from production at the family's kitchen table into a formidable $80 million empire within a 14-year period. The Gardners come from a longtime hair-care business lineage, the Soft Sheen dynasty, started by Gary's father decades earlier. Soft Sheen was ultimately sold to hair care giant L'Oreal for over $100 million. The Gardners claim Namaste's growth occurred through listening to the needs and desires of customers for healing hair care products that reminded them of nourishing household remedies. The hair care line became a leader in its industry but faced the dilemma of how to expand sales in new markets, especially international markets such as South Africa and Nigeria.

Students learn to develop new business opportunities including international expansion and tools of the internet to exploit the tools of vision, innovation and change resulting in new customer services and solutions. Students will focus on the basic fundamentals of sales and review the relationship of customer need identification and the reasons that make people buy. Students will assess the entrepreneurial strategies applied to fuel future growth based on an idea or product. Students will focus on the sales fundamentals that can be applied to entrepreneurial environments.

The increasing demand for labels with greater appeal has lead to the specialised development of lustre pigments and powders, particularly in gravure and flexographic printing applications. They provide coatings ranging from soft, satin sheen to sparkling brilliance, and there are some which give rich metallic lustres. Printers who have had experience in the use of bronze and aluminium metallic powders have found that the techniques used in the incorporation of these types of pigments are much the same as when using lustre pigments.

Prompt response times have won CMB General Packaging an order to supply Manders Paints with Polycans for some of its fastest selling lines. Manders' ‘own brand’ Maestro Emulsion, its Trend Budget Emulsion and the Trend Kwik Coat range will all now be available in the lightweight polypropylene container.

GALVANIZING CONFERENCE. The fifth International Galvanizing Conference of the European General Galvanizers' Association is being held this month under the auspices of the Brussels Universal Exhibition.

The Dudley Beauty case illustrates a contemporary branding, management and marketing challenge facing many companies that are 50 plus years old. Movahhed (2016) highlights the six elements to consider during brand strategy: the target audience, the brand promise, brand perception (past, current and future), brand values, brand voice and brand positioning. The times have changed with changing macroenvironmental factors including political, economic, sociological, technological, legal and other environmental (PESTLE) changes that affect a business but which the business does not directly control.

The case is based upon an interview with Dudley Beauty CEO and President Ursula Dudley Oglesby and secondary sources.

The “A Makeover for Dudley’s Q+” case explores the challenges of a second-generation textured hair care and personal care company in the direct selling channel as it faces an aging market and changing business and economic environment. A Black-owned company, begun in 1967 by her parents, Dudley Beauty is led by the founders’ daughter, Harvard College and Harvard Law School-educated, Ursula Dudley Oglesby. At over 50 years old, the company has continually created new textured hair products and has high brand awareness among older Black consumers but has not adequately addressed changing hair trends and shifting communication preferences of younger consumers. The company is at a critical point needing to reach a younger, larger market to survive. The business situation supports marketing, management, strategy, and/or entrepreneurship undergraduate students in understanding how macroenvironmental forces and internal structures affect businesses.

This case is intended primarily for use by undergraduates in a variety of courses. It is suitable for courses in Principles of Marketing, Entrepreneurial Marketing, general Entrepreneurship and Marketing Strategy courses covering topics such as direct selling, the role of environmental factors in business, rebranding efforts using digital and social media marketing and women/minority business owners.

We address the following research questions: (1) Is the innovation trajectory of the acquirer affected by previous acquisitions? (2) In which direction knowledge recombination from the acquisition is pushed further? (3) Is the technological acquisition more a means for knowledge exploration and radical innovation or, on the contrary, a way for consolidating previous technological specialization?

The nature of this study is exploratory; therefore, we opted for an inductive approach based on the L'Oréal case study analysis. Data were triangulated from different sources: (a) the L'Oréal website and press releases collected in the 2009–2015 period; (b) journal articles and books on the global cosmetics industry and the insightful work of Jones (2010); (c) the Questel Orbit database containing data on patents; and (d) the Zephyr – Bureau van Dijk database containing information on the acquisitions of firms.

Empirical evidence from a patent data analysis reveals a paradoxical path. On the one hand, acquisitions enable the company to explore new technological spaces; on the other hand, they allow it to reinforce a preexisting technological trajectory, even when the knowledge base of the target is distant from that of the acquirer. Thus, in our case study, the absorption and recombination of knowledge from a variety of domains support specialization more than diversification technology strategies.

We add to innovation management literature a new perspective, by offering a detailed analysis, through patent data, of the knowledge recombination process, led by technological acquisitions.

Silica extender pigments obtained from natural sources have been used in various coating systems for some time. A review of the microcrystalline silicas available to the paint formulator is included for reference purposes. Cost reduction and sheen control were recognised as attributes of ground natural silica. Properties of the finer or micronised natural silicas, such as lower pigment abrasion and low oil absorption, are covered to indicate potential contributions to the traditional or conventional as well as new coating systems.

EXAMINATION of the cross‐section of a tree‐trunk shows the following details of structure: Covering the trunk is the corky bark, the outer layers of which serve to protect the trunk from extreme variations of temperature and humidity, and from mechanical injury; the inner layers, called the bast, serve to conduct the food manufactured by the leaves to actively‐growing parts of the wood and to places of food‐storage in the tree. The bark and the bast together form the rind.