Value Chain Management of Blue Ocean Footwear Limited

Abstract

Blue Ocean Footwear Limited (BOFL) is one of the newest addition is the footwear industry in Bangladesh. It is a joint venture company between Apex Enterprises and Greenland International. They started their journey in 30th September 2009. Blue Ocean Footwear’s vision is to be a leading exporter of footwear in the country by using their state of the art technology, skills and experiences. Apex Enterprise Limited of Bangladesh holds 51% share and Green Ocean International Limited of Taiwan holds 49% share. Along with factory employee 1450 people works under BOFL. BOFL have 10 directors among them five of them are Bangladeshi citizens and five are of Taiwanese citizenship. This report discussed about value chain management of blue ocean footwear limited. Blue ocean footwear limited exports their products through Irrevocable Letter of Credit to the prospective buyers. The process of export is very long and difficult due to rudimentary and lengthy process followed by country’s customs clearance. They collect raw materials like leather from Apex tannery, Sadar tannery and other raw materials like Outsole, Steel Shank, Elastic, Buckle, Velcro Loop, Foot Bed, Loop, Inner Box, Jersey, EVA foot bed, EVA sheet, toe puff, Insole Board Foam, Reinforcing Tape, Cotton fabric, Jersey, PVC Sheet, Pen, Powder they import it from Italy, Taiwan and China etc. They only manufacture ladies shoes like shoes, boots, sandals, slippers and all kind of footwear that they export to their buyers. Blue Ocean Footwear Limited’s annual capacity of production is 1080000 pairs of ladies footwear, 540000 pairs of Children Footwear and 180000 pairs of Men’s Footwear. Altogether they have the capacity to produce 1.8 million pairs of shoes annually. After the completing the production, factory sends confirmation to the head office, and then Accounts and Finance department calculates the cost of the production. After that commercial department starts processing documents to export the products. They only export their products and they have no branches in our country. China and Vietnam are their main markets. They did not distribute their products directly to the end users. There are some processes that they follow to distribute their products.

Moreover some errors have been pointed out in findings section like lack of coordination between departments, lack of skilled and experience employee which can weaken the chances of the organization in the long run. At the end BOFL has been recommended to reduce the intermediaries, provide training to the employees and introduce an automated system for improving efficiency at the long run.