The two businesses that I have decided to investigate are Sealy Beds and Asda.

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Business Assignment

The two businesses that I have decided to investigate are Sealy Beds and Asda.

I have chosen these two businesses because they are local and easily accessible, in the past either a family member or me have shopped in it. These two businesses are quite the opposite; Sealy Beds manufactures their own products and sell them to different stores. Whereas Asda buys their products off other brands and sells them in there own supermarkets.

General Information on Sealy Beds

Sealy Beds UK is a part of the Silentnight group that is based in Lancashire. The brand came to the UK in1974 and it is located in Aspatria, West Cumbria. In Aspatria it operates 200,000 square foot manufacturing plant; it supplies beds to retailers all over the UK. In the year 1999 Sealy Beds celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary.

Sealy is primarily an American owned company, Sealy brand is also made in many other countries including:

  • Australia
  • New Zealand
  • Canada
  • The West Indies
  • South Africa
  • Japan
  • Israel
  • Thailand

When Sealy started making beds its annual turnover was a mere £450,000, but Sealy started to flourish and it has now established itself among the leading bed manufacturers such as Sleep Easy, Millbrook, Myers and Slumberland.

General Information on Asda

                                              Asda has made itself the best value food and clothing superstore. Asda became part of ‘The Wal-Mart Family’ on 26th July 1999. The company was formed in 1965 by a group of farmers from Yorkshire. It has come a long way since then, it now has 240 stores and 19 depots across the UK. Asda offer prices on an average of 10% lower than there main competitors such as; Tesco, Safeway, Sainsburys and Morrisons. Asda employ 100,000 workers and they have the best reputation for being the best and friendliest in the industry. They work with over 2,800 suppliers.  

Sealy Beds Location

                                      Sealy Beds is located in Aspatria, West Cumbria. Aspatria is known as an unemployment blackspot. The nearest city is Carlisle, which is half an hour drive away. The West Coast InterCity Railway links Sealy to the rest of the UK. The company tries to ensure that its location will never affect its product cost. When it comes to distribution Sealy Beds never ship fresh air, by this they mean because they are so isolated in the North West and the majority of their customers is in the South East it is so costly to distribute their goods. They use all the space they can and don't waste any.

On the map to the left is from Aspatria to London it is 5 hours minimum drive. This would cost a fortune to distribute all over the UK. 

If Sealy Beds

set-up again in a different location, it would not locate in Aspatria because of how isolated it is. They would maybe locate in the Midlands. I think an ideal place would be Birmingham because it is in the middle of

England this is to distribute over the UK and it is close to motorway links and main airports.

Asda Location

                       Asda are a Supermarket chain they have stores in the UK everywhere, they may be even located internationally. Asda tend to locate either on the outskirts of a town/city or in the town/city centre, facts have shown that Asda locate on the outskirts 36%, the city/town centre 40% and the suburbs 24%. Usually in many cases the Supermarkets in town/city centres do the best. By the best I mean make profit or gain more and more customers every year. Businesses locate in different areas; they make their decisions depending on different factors. It depends on nearness to customers, transport links, financial help, the cost of premises and the history and tradition of the area. In my opinion the one that is most important is nearness to customers because if you have no customers you have no business. Another that may be considered to be important is transport links because you don’t want to be too far away form main places in the UK because you will use most of your money on distribution.

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Sealy Beds Ownership

                                                In 1947 a man called Tom Clark setup a business called Silentnight Holdings PLC (Public Limited Company). It was a family based company; this means that the family owned the majority of the shares. A PLC is when the company sells it shares to the public to gain money which they use to invest in new ideas. The accounts that a company has are made public that could be described as being one ...

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